


Gathering Light

by Perosha



Series: Garbage AU [2]
Category: Kingdom Hearts
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Gen, KH3 AU, M/M, Post-Kingdom Hearts Dream Drop Distance
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-07-23
Updated: 2017-08-08
Packaged: 2018-12-05 15:55:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 28,063
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11581320
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Perosha/pseuds/Perosha
Summary: [KH3 AU, Drama/Comedy. Sequel to "The Guest."] Castle Oblivion has fallen, and the Keyblade wielders are left trying to prepare themselves to thwart Xehanort's ambitions. With Ventus revived, there are seven wielders now, just like there need to be...but is seven really going to be enough? — Chapter 6: Kairi is keeping an interesting secret.





	1. Chapter 1

_ Wake up, sleepyhead. _

The voice drifted through his consciousness faintly, muted, as if he were deep underwater. It was a nice voice, though. Warm, and gentle, and comforting. He liked it very much.

_ It’s time to wake up now. Can you do that for me? _

Wake...up?

His thoughts stirred. Gradually more and more of them passed through his mind, and it was like being buoyed up through the water by his own reviving consciousness, following that comforting voice up to where the surface sparkled just above him, shining and vast, so close that he could reach out and touch it if he just tried a little harder...

_ “Ven...please come back to me. Please.” _

Ventus opened his eyes.

Pain stabbed through his head, making him groan, as if he were staring straight at the sun. He squeezed his eyes shut again, and a hand was laid over his brow, blocking the light. A barrage of sensations assailed him, too many, too much—light and sweat and thirst and hunger and every muscle, every fiber of him weak and aching, aching deep like he had a fever, but—

But even through all of it, he would have known that voice anywhere.

“A...qua…”

His parched throat could barely eke out the name. A glass of water was pressed to his lips, and he chugged the whole thing gratefully, letting unseen hands wipe the last trickles out of the corners of his mouth and hold him, helping him shift his weight. Behind his closed eyelids, the light dulled to a less intense brightness—or maybe his eyes themselves were slowly adjusting to being used. Ventus still had to screw up a bit of courage to tentatively open them again.

The blurry white world slowly resolved itself into solid colors and shapes.

He wasn’t in his bedroom, but it was definitely  _ a  _ bedroom, somewhere, and he was lying in a bed set against the wall, just like his own bed was at home. The empty room was mostly made of stone, as if the building was very old, and lying flat on his back as he was, all he could see out of the window were clouds skimming across an endless, tranquil blue sky. He tried to move, and couldn’t. His body wouldn’t obey him.

Aqua sat in a chair beside the bed, holding the empty water glass. She was smiling tiredly.

“Good morning, Ven.”

“What...happened?” He hardly recognized his own voice, it was so quiet and croaky. “I feel...so...weak…”

“You’ve been asleep.” Aqua tapped the rim of the glass with one finger, magically filling it, and helped him to drink it down. “For a long, long time.”

“Asleep…”

That seemed...right. He definitely felt as if he’d been asleep, buried in one of those long naps so intense that it robbed you of all sense of time and place. Jumbled memories came to him as he thought back through the past, flashes of jungle and beach and forest, all the different far-flung worlds he’d traveled through in pursuit of—

“Vanitas!” He struggled to try and force himself upright, his heart racing. Sweat beaded on his forehead from the effort of trying to move his body. “The χ-Blade...Aqua, what happened to it? Did Xehanort get the χ-Blade?”

“No, Ven, he didn’t. Because of you, he still doesn’t have it.”

His quickened pulse slowed again as the panic ebbed away, and he fell back onto the sheets. They felt sticky, like he’d been lying there a while, sweating.

“I’m so proud of you, Ven. You fought so hard.” Aqua touched his damp hair, smiling. “How do you feel? On the inside?”

Now that he thought about it...Ventus winced and reached for his chest, clutching at the fabric of his shirt. It too was damp with sweat, and smelled.

“Something hurts,” he admitted. “I feel...strange.”

“You probably will for a while. Your heart was badly damaged during the fight at the Keyblade Graveyard. You almost didn’t make it.”

“Really?” He let go of his chest as the odd pain dulled. “Did you...save me?”

“No. Someone else saved you.” Her smile turned warmer. “A boy from another world. He let your heart into his. That’s why you’ve been asleep for so long. Your heart was inside of his, being sheltered.”

“Being...sheltered?”

He tried to sit up. Aqua helped him, and once he was propped up a bit, he looked down at his hands in his lap, forming one into a fist, studying his own fingers as he tried to get his weak body to do what he asked, and tried to understand what Aqua had just said.

Another boy’s...heart? His heart had been  _ inside _ someone else’s?

“His name is Sora,” said Aqua. “He kept you safe for me.”

The name sounded...familiar, somehow. Ventus looked up at her, blinking.

“He’s not here right now,” Aqua said, “but he’ll be coming here soon. You can meet him, and tell him thank you.”

“Sora…”

It sounded so bizarre, so impossible, and yet...Maybe that was why his heart felt the way it did now? All tingly and achey, like the pins and needles feeling a limb got when it fell asleep, except—deeper, inside of him. It wasn’t like anything he’d ever felt before.

Aqua pulled him into a hug, startling him.

“Oh, Ven...I’ve missed you so  _ much...” _

He hugged her in return as best as he could, and even when they pulled apart she kept her hands on his shoulders, smiling at him with (he realized, to his surprise) the beginnings of happy tears in her eyes.

“I’m sorry for worrying you, Aqua,” he said. “If my heart was with someone else, then...I guess you must have been pretty scared, huh?”

“You don’t have anything to apologize for, Ven. You were so brave back then. If you hadn’t done what you did...”

“Back then?” With effort, he shrugged her arms off of his shoulders. “Hang on...How long has it been since I fell asleep?”

“A very long time.”

“Really?” Maybe that explained why his body felt so incredibly feeble. “So like...a few weeks?”

“No, Ven. It’s been twelve years.”

Ventus stared at her. He had, of course, not heard her correctly.

“Twelve...twelve  _ years?” _

“Yes. Your heart has been inside of Sora this whole time.”

She reached out and touched his chest, then let go. He felt the spot where she’d touched.

“But...That can’t be right. Can it?” What kind of joke was that? It wasn’t like Aqua at all. “It can’t have been that long. You look the same.”

“I’ve been away too, Ven. In the Realm of Darkness, where time doesn’t flow. That’s why it took me so long to come find you.”

“The Realm of Darkness? You went there?”

This, too, couldn’t possibly be right.

“But—but the master said that people can’t go there.” Horror dawned as he imagined it. “He said that if someone with a heart ever went there, they would lose their mind, and...and their heart would be destroyed forever...”

Aqua reached out and found his hand, squeezing it.

Ventus faltered. His thumb brushing against the back of her hand felt something there beneath the thin fabric of her glove, a tiny scar, and when he studied her closely he noticed she had other scars here and there that she had never had before. She was so talented at magic that even the most alarming training accidents had never been able to leave a blemish on her; now on her bare shoulder Ventus could see a few white marks that couldn’t be anything except old, faded scars. With a sick feeling in his stomach, he noticed several of the scars were the same size and shape, positioned in a huge semicircle across her shoulder and back—like some massive creature had tried to bite her in half, shaking her in its jaws like a ragdoll.

She didn’t look a day older than she had on the battlefield. Her hair hadn’t even grown. But something else about her had noticeably changed. The Aqua that he knew so well was strong but soft, her frequent smile kind, the friend who always offered a word of encouragement or a token of gratitude, the maker of thoughtful, handmade birthday presents and trays of sweets baked for no particular reason. Now she looked...she looked sterner, somehow. Not that her softness had disappeared, but that it had been encased beneath a thick shell for the sake of survival. She looked now as if she’d be quick to draw her blade at the first sign of a threat.

Aqua touched a scar on her shoulder.

“I was trapped there,” she said, “in the Realm of Darkness. But I survived.”

And it had to be true, because she wouldn’t lie about something like that. Ventus didn’t know what to say.

“How?” was all he could ask. “How did you...make it back?”

“You kept me going, Ven. You and Terra. I couldn’t give in to the darkness with the two of you out there waiting for me. I fought and fought, for a long time, because I had to see you both again. I had to make sure you were okay.”

“Aqua…”

He couldn’t take his eyes off of the scar on her shoulder.

“Aqua, I’m sorry...”

“It isn’t your fault, Ven. You don’t have anything to be sorry for.”

“But…”

With effort, he hugged her again. It was a little easier to do this time, but all his muscles ached, and his arms fell limply away long before he wanted to let her go. He stared at her, searching her face, studying the deep sadness that now tainted her familiar smile. Trying to believe her. Trying to understand.

“So then, if I was asleep,” he said, slowly, “and you were in the Realm of Darkness...Where is Terra? Is he here?”

An unsettling thought struck him as he asked it. If it had really, somehow, been twelve years since the battle with Vanitas, then Terra would be thirty years old. But that was crazy. How could Terra be thirty? He had just seen him before the battle, the battle that was the last thing he remembered...

“No, Ven. Terra’s not here right now.”

“Then where is he?”

“I’m not sure.”

Aqua’s face changed. Her expression darkened, and Ventus thought he’d never seen her look so serious before in all their years together, not even when they’d gathered right before the battle and he’d told her to kill him if needed.

“Ven, twelve years ago...Xehanort took Terra.”

“Took him? Took him where?”

Aqua passed a hand over her face.

As she talked, Ventus went pale, and when he started trembling she reached for his hand again, clasping it in both of hers. But she didn’t stop talking, and as she spoke it felt like something came alive inside Ventus and tried to crawl out of his heart and up his throat. Despite the bright sunlight filling the room, all he could see in his mind’s eye was darkness. Terra trapped in some place filled utterly with darkness, alone in the void, his body a prison he could no longer see or hear or feel out of. Terra buried deep inside his own heart, rotting away in the darkness, silently screaming and screaming and screaming...

“But he’s okay, right?” Ventus heard himself ask, his voice cracking. “He’s not...He’s not gone. He’s fighting. Xehanort can’t destroy his heart, right? He has to be alive…”

_ Even after twelve years? _ Twelve years of crushing darkness and Xehanort’s strangling malevolent will, and then all the rest of it that Ventus didn’t understand, Terra being ripped in half, into other monsters who were only further extensions of Xehanort...

Ventus met Aqua’s tense expression, feeling as though all the light and warmth had been sucked out of the room.

“Aqua, tell me the truth. Is Terra dead?”

“I don’t know, Ven.”

“Aqua, don’t lie to me. Please. I want to...I  _ have _ to know.”

“That’s the truth, Ven. I promise. No one knows exactly what’s happened to him. He might still be fighting Xehanort, but he might...” Her tense expression flickered. “He might have been destroyed, too. Maybe a long time ago.”

“Do you think that he…”

Ventus trailed off. He couldn’t even say it aloud.

“I don’t think he’s gone, Ven. Not completely.” Aqua touched his face, holding his gaze. Her blue eyes were sad and steely in a way he didn’t recognize. “I know Terra’s darkness was strong, but...I think his heart is stronger. I still believe in him. Don’t you?”

“Of course I do! Terra  _ is  _ strong. The strongest. Xehanort can’t beat him.”

But as determinedly as Ventus thought it, other thoughts came to him as well. Terra trading blows with Eraqus and darkness coursing through him, palpable, powerful, terrifying...The image of Terra imprisoned inside his own heart came again, only this time Terra was struggling violently, the darkness eating holes in him over the years until he’d wasted away to nothing, a gaunt skeletal shadow that the darkness swallowed up at last, leaving nothing.

Aqua seemed to know what he was thinking.

“We’re going to find Terra,” she said firmly, “if we can, and help him. That’s one of the most important things we have to do now.”

Outside the window, the boundless blue sky seemed to mock Ventus with its tranquil beauty. At this angle, the sky was all he could see, and a single puffy cloud drifted lazily past, idle, uncaring. 

The image of Terra alone in the dark burned itself into his mind yet again. Ventus wanted to cry out (out of what? horror? rage?) and a stab of strange pain slashed through his heart, making him gasp. He forced himself not to think about Terra, to stare hard at the puffy cloud as it started to edge out of sight, concentrating on it.

“What is this place?” he asked, watching the cloud disappear. He realized he still didn’t recognize the rest of the room. “This isn’t...home, is it?”

“No. We can’t go to the Land of Departure anymore.” Aqua sighed. “When you first fell asleep, I had to transform the castle into a maze, to keep you safe. But now Xehanort has taken over it.”

“Then...we have to take it back, don’t we?”

But Aqua shook her head.

“That doesn’t matter right now, Ven. All that matters is that we got you out safely. Xehanort only wanted the castle because he was looking for you. He can have it for now.”

Ventus frowned, then tried to sit all the way up. Aqua helped him, and this time he managed to stay upright while she propped some pillows behind him. Instead of letting himself relax against them, however, he mustered all his strength and grabbed the nearby windowsill, dragging himself up just enough to where he could fold his legs beneath him and sit on his knees on the edge of the bed, holding himself up against the windowsill and peering outside.

He knew at once that they were in a castle, because the outside of it looked to be made of metal and stone, and the room they were in was high above the ground. Away below, he could see a tiny little town. It only had a few dozen houses, and none of them very big; it reminded him of the village that had existed near the castle back home, on the other side of the mountains. This place was even smaller, though, with no buildings more than a couple of stories high, and a single open plaza that looked like a market square. It was tidy and quiet, and there didn’t seem to be that many people.

“What world are we on?” he asked aloud. “What is this place?”

“This place is called Radiant Garden. Do you remember it?”

“Radiant Garden?”

Appalled, Ventus pressed his face to the glass, smushing the tip of his nose.

“No way...It can’t be. We were just there, remember? That’s where I got our passes for Disney Town. Radiant Garden doesn’t look like this, it has all those fountains, and flowers, and...”

As he talked, something caught his eye, half-hidden far below in the shadow of the castle—an open space dotted with crumpled stonework and large, twisted, rusty pipes that looked like some huge animal’s scattered bones. Even thus ruined, his mind’s eye could trace upon it the exact layout of the reactor where he and Aqua and Terra had defeated the Unversed together a few weeks ago.

Twelve years ago.

“Aqua, what...What happened to this place?”

But he was sure he knew the answer; the sick feeling in his broken heart had already told it to him. He looked over his shoulder.

“Xehanort came here, didn’t he?”

Aqua nodded.

Ventus’s hand fell away from the window to clench into a fist, and he watched small figures move about in the town square, not seeing them, not seeing anything except the memories of what this place had been. He forced himself to push away from the window, returning his attention to Aqua, who hadn’t moved from her chair.

“Aqua, if Xehanort took over the Land of Departure, then...where did Master Eraqus go? Did he come here too?”

“The master is gone, Ven. He left his Keyblade to me.”

“Gone? What do you mean?”

She bowed her head, wordless, and laid her hands in her lap palms up. Eraqus’s Keyblade appeared across her knees in a shower of sparks and golden chains, and Ventus reached out to touch it, tentatively brushing the metal, which was warm as if with life. The Keyblade was solid, and unmistakable.

His throat closed up. He clutched the sheets hard enough to make his hands shake, staring unseeingly at the surface of the bed, and against his will an onslaught of tears welled up in his eyes as he thought of Master Eraqus, the laugh-lines wrinkling around his eyes when he smiled proudly after a difficult lesson, the incalculable pain in his loving voice as he’d said  _ you must exist no more— _

“It’s okay to cry,” he heard Aqua say.

He grit his teeth and clenched the sheets so hard that his knuckles whitened, and when the tears came Aqua embraced him and held him tight against her, resting her chin in his hair and stroking the back of his head, saying something he couldn’t understand because the pain inside him had turned alive and was eating him up, Eraqus gone, the master was dead and it was his fault, all his...

“He tried to kill me,” Ven managed. “The master...Terra saved me…”

Aqua squeezed him tighter.

“He should have left me...Terra should have left me, he should have just _ let me die—” _

It had to have been twelve years. All the time he’d been asleep, his heart had been filling up with pain, and now he was here and everything he loved was gone and his heart was spilling over with what could only be twelve years’ worth of pain, flooding him with a strange agony worse than anything he’d ever known in his life. The tingling in his heart erupted into something nameless that consumed all his senses, and as he sobbed and sobbed Aqua held him so tightly that it squeezed the breath out of him, making his gasps even higher and harsher. He couldn’t talk; his throat had swollen too much. But strings of words struggled out anyway.

“He should have let him kill me,” he managed, his voice so distorted that it barely sounded his. “The master was right, he should have let me die, then he’d be—”

_ “No, _ Ven,” came Aqua’s voice from above him. “No, no no no…Don’t say that...please don’t say that...After all this time...”

Somehow, though her voice had hardly changed, Ventus knew that she was crying, too.

“What chance would Terra have against the darkness if he knew that you were dead?” came her whisper. The hand on the back of his head ran fingers into his hair, clutching him tightly, never wanting to let go ever again. “What chance would I have had to come back if you weren’t my light to follow?”

The unnatural pain in his heart swallowed him, erasing all thought.

When Ventus came to (minutes later? hours?), he found he was no longer crying, but his chest still ached like someone had ripped everything out of it. Aqua was still cradling him against her, her voice low and calm, fingers running through his hair just like she’d done when he was younger, in those first days he’d come to the Land of Departure, when the nightmares would shake him awake.

He said nothing for awhile, letting her hold him, listening to her voice and trying to shove down the lump in his throat until he could speak again. It took a long time.

“So, it was all...It was all for nothing.”

He pulled away from her, wiping the last tears off of his cheeks. Aqua offered him her billowy sleeve, and he smeared his face dry, swallowing hard. Her own tears seemed as if they’d stopped long before, and she had that new, hard shell over her once more. Ventus looked up at her, his face pale.

“Our home is gone...and the master’s gone...and Terra. He has Terra. And…And it was all for  _ nothing _ . We didn’t stop Master Xehanort at all.”

“No, Ven, we didn’t. But we’re going to.”

“How, Aqua? We tried, but the three of us weren’t strong enough. And now, without Terra…What chance do we have? What are we supposed to…”

He cut himself off, swallowing. Aqua tilted his chin up, then touched the side of his face with the back of her hand. After his spate of hot tears, her hand felt cool and soothing.

“You’re right, Ven—the three of us weren’t enough. That’s why we’re getting help now. As much help as we can find.”

“What do you mean? Who would help us against Xehanort?”

Aqua let go of him, her hand falling into her lap. Ventus realized the front of her corset was damp from all of his tears.

“A lot has happened while you and I were away, Ven. There are other Keyblade wielders now. More hearts that are willing to shine against the darkness. And Xehanort has hurt so many people that now, everyone knows how dangerous he is. Everyone wants to put a stop to him. It’s not just the two of us anymore.”

“More Keyblade wielders?” Ventus echoed, taking this in. He tried to imagine it. “But, I thought that Master Eraqus and Xehanort were the only teachers left. Master Yen Sid is retired...”

“There are people who have taught themselves.” Aqua smiled. “You remember Master Yen Sid’s apprentice, don’t you? Mickey? He’s still helping us. And so is the boy who saved you—Sora. And Sora’s best friend, Riku...he’s a master all on his own. And there are brand-new wielders, too. They’re willing to fight against Xehanort with us, even though they’ve only just started their training.”

“Really? Who are they?”

Instead of answering, Aqua turned and looked over at the closed door, concern playing around the corners of her mouth. She tilted her head, as if listening hard, and then, after some deliberation, raised a hand towards the door with two fingers extended. She flicked her wrist to cast a spell, and the door slammed open inwards.

Two people who had obviously been pressed flat to the door outside, listening through it, fell into the middle of the room in a tangled heap.

“Ow! Crap—Hey, move your elbow, princess—”

“Get  _ off _ my leg first, I’m stuck—”

Aqua sighed and smiled wearily as the pair struggled to get to their feet.

“Ven...these two helped me save you. I want you to meet my new students: Kairi, and Lea.”


	2. Chapter 2

After all the immediate introductions, questions, follow-up questions, and lots of reassurances, Aqua left Ventus in Kairi and Lea’s hands while she went into town for a short while, though she wouldn’t reveal the reason for her sudden errand, saying it was going to be a surprise. Having gotten many surprises from Aqua in the past, and considering the momentous occasion, Ventus was certain she was slipping off to bring him some gift she’d put together—maybe she was going to whip up one of his favorite baked goods. That had always been one of her go-to tactics when he was sick or sad.

As much as Ventus wanted to keep talking to her, he was also glad she’d given him a little space after telling him so many terrible things one right after the other. Terra and Eraqus and the doings of Master Xehanort all felt raw inside him, and he knew there was no way he could hope to understand or process it all right away. He just needed to sit with it and let the hot pain cool down into something he could pick up and examine without burning himself. Having the two new Keyblade trainees to talk to was a welcome distraction.

The pair were as interested in Ventus as he was in them. Kairi was around Ventus’s age, freckled and tomboyish, her red hair tied back into a short ponytail, while Lea was somewhere in his mid-twenties, tall and lanky, his own red hair like a huge spiky mane. After all three had shown off their Keyblades to one another (Lea’s taking several tries to appear, much to his frustrated embarrassment), Kairi claimed the chair beside the bed that Aqua had vacated.

“We’ve heard so much about you from the master,” she said, shifting to sit cross-legged in the chair. Lea stood by the window, leaning with his back to it and his arms folded. “She told us all about how you fought against Master Xehanort and everything. That was really brave of you.”

Ventus didn’t know how to respond. It was hard to feel brave or proud when everything had gone so horribly wrong despite his best efforts. He felt the beginnings of another lump in his throat, and forced it down quickly. The last thing he wanted to do was look like a crybaby in front of Aqua’s new pupils.

“Glad you could finally join us,” said Lea, nodding to him. “Bet you’ll catch up in no time.”

“I hope so,” said Ventus. “It’s hard to believe Aqua’s teaching her own students already. She only just passed her Mark of Mastery exam…”

No, she hadn’t. That was a long time ago now.

“All you’ve gotta know going forward,” said Lea, “is that I’m the cool one in this outfit. Got it memorized?”

He smirked and tapped two fingers to the side of his head. Something clicked in Ventus’s mind at the sound of this phrase, and he sat up straighter.

“I’ve met you before! The last time I was here. You were my age then. I guess...” he sized Lea up, “it really has been a long time…”

“What’re you talking about, kid?”

“Don’t you remember?” Ventus had to tell himself that while it only felt like a few weeks to him, it had been years for everyone else. “You challenged me to a fight, just for fun. I think,” he searched Lea’s puzzled face, “you were trying to cheer me up. You really don’t remember doing that?”

“Nope.” Lea shook his head. “Don’t sweat it, kid. You’ve been out of it for ages. You’re probably just getting me mixed up with someone else.”

“It  _ was  _ you,” Ventus insisted. “I know it was. You were wearing that same bandanna, and you had these disc things that you threw at me, and…”

Lea’s eyebrows raised.

“...and your friend was with you. He had blue hair, and he was wearing...” Ventus struggled to remember; only one detail had stuck in his mind. “His shirt had a moon on it. Right here.”

He touched the lapel of his jacket. Lea looked as though Ventus had hit him in the stomach.

“You…” He stared. “You seriously....met me and Isa?”

“Yeah. I did.”

Lea had no immediate reply. He muttered something halfheartedly without meeting Ventus’s eye, then rubbed the side of his neck, staring out the window at the bright morning beyond as if looking for a distraction.

“Well, how about that?” he said to the window. “Y’know...Maybe I do kinda remember something like that happening...waaay back when…” He turned. “But that was  _ you? _ That’s...somethin’ else.”

Ventus nodded, one hand clutching the crumpled bedsheets.

“It’s good to see you again,” he told Lea, more as a courtesy than anything. “Um...How about your friend? How is he? I guess he’s not training with the Keyblade...”

Kairi had been toying with one of the spare pillows from the bed, and when she froze at this question, Ventus knew at once that he’d somehow said the wrong thing. Lea unfolded his arms and stopped leaning quite so casually against the window.

“Doesn’t matter,” he said, with a very forced sort of glibness.

_ “‘Doesn’t matter’?” _ Kairi echoed. “Seriously, Lea? Yes, it does.”

She looked over at Ventus, still holding the pillow.

“His friend got possessed by Xehanort. Like what happened to your friend Terra.”

Lea spluttered.

“Hey, princess—c’mon, you don’t gotta just  _ say  _ it like that—”

“Like he wasn’t gonna find out anyway?” She tossed the pillow into the air, catching it. “Xehanort’s plan’s not exactly a secret, Lea. Besides, you’re the one who won’t shut up about getting your friends back.”

“Yeah, but…still.”

“Why did Xehanort take your friend?” Ventus asked him.

“That,” said Lea, “is a great question. No good answer, either. Guess I’m hoping to try and find out one of these days.”

He shuffled uncomfortably, and Ventus regretted bringing it up—though at least now he knew the likely reason why Lea had volunteered to fight Xehanort in the first place. He realized Lea was staring at him, and at first he felt a twinge of guilt, but then he realized Lea’s look wasn’t accusatory, just very intense, and...And what? Determined? Sad? Something strange.

“What’s wrong?” Ventus asked him. “Do I have something on my face?”

Lea managed a forced laugh as Ventus felt his cheek, finding nothing there to blame. Kairi looked between the two of them several times, then shook her head.

“Don’t mind him, Ventus.” She dropped the pillow she’d been holding back onto the bed, at Ventus’s feet. “He’s just weirded out that you look like his friend Roxas. He wouldn’t stop staring at you while you were asleep...like a total creeper...”

“Seriously, Kairi, can you not—”

But another pillow came sailing through the air, hitting Lea weakly in the face before he could finish. He lobbed it back at her, and she caught it with one hand.

“We can’t not tell him,” said Kairi. “People are going to mistake him for Roxas anyway, aren’t they?”

“Who is Roxas?” Ventus asked, thoroughly confused.

It took hearing the explanation twice for it to sink in. Even then, Ventus wasn’t sure he really believed it.

“So there was a guy who looked just like me, who...came out of Sora?” Ventus tried to picture it. “That’s...really, really weird.”

“You don’t have to tell us,” said Kairi. “I only met him once, though...Lea’s the one who can tell you all about him. They were friends.”

“But,” Ventus was still struggling with the several new concepts he’d been given, “I thought you said Roxas was a ‘Nobody’? So...that means…”

“Lea was a Nobody once too,” said Kairi matter-of-factly, “but now he’s not. He’s back to normal. Well...as normal as he can get, anyway.”

“Really?”

Ventus wasn’t sure what to make of this, and Lea wasn’t any help; instead of providing any clarification, he just coughed awkwardly and looked disgruntled. Kairi rolled her eyes.

“He doesn’t like to talk about it,” she said. Lea coughed again.

“I can explain that whole thing myself, Kairi,” he said, but Kairi didn’t budge.

“Yeah, but I bet you weren’t going to. He’s been asleep for  _ twelve years, _ Lea—he needs to know  _ everything.” _

Ventus privately thought that if he learned ‘everything’ about all that seemed to have happened, then his head might very well explode. Feeling adrift in an overwhelming tide of information, he seized upon the last idea he’d been taught.

“So, a ‘Nobody’ is someone who exists without a heart?” That definitely should have been impossible, according to everything Master Eraqus had taught him, but really...what did impossible even mean right now? “And you just...don’t feel anything, ever? That sounds awful.”

“Definitely can’t recommend it,” Lea said grimly, digging his pinky finger into his ear. “Not a fun gig.”

He hesitated, as if about to elaborate, but then brushed it off, instead studying Ventus’s face again with that same odd intensity. The thought occurred to Ventus that perhaps it was an unconscious reaction on Lea’s part, rather than something he was choosing to do deliberately.

“So, er...Ven. Can we call you Ven?”

“Sure.”

“Okay, Ven. You wouldn’t, er…” Lea rubbed at his jaw. “How do I put this...Hm. Okay. When you were out of commission, and your heart was inside of Sora’s, and all that good stuff...Did you ever, uh. Notice anything, or...”

“Lea, I already told you,” Kairi cut in, “it doesn’t work like that. He’s not going to know anything.”

“I won’t know anything about what?” Ventus asked. Kairi sighed, exasperated.

“He just wants to know if Roxas is okay. You know, inside Sora.”

Lea glared at her, and she glared back, defiant.

“What does that have to do with me?” asked Ventus. “Are you asking if I...talked to Roxas, or something? Because I don’t remember being inside Sora at all. It was like being asleep.”

“I told you,” Kairi said to Lea again. “You’re not really ‘awake’ in there.” To Ventus, she explained, “My heart went inside of Sora’s once, too. But you didn’t know when I was there, did you? And I didn’t know you were there either. It’s not like that. I tried to tell him.”

Ventus nodded, not sure of what else to say. This was all too much to try and imagine.

Kairi shifted in her chair, setting her feet on the floor instead of sitting cross-legged.

“Though, now that I think about it…” she added, “I guess that means you and I have sort of met before, huh? Technically, we were roommates.”

She smiled, but Ventus couldn’t really smile back—the joke and everything predicated on it were all just so strange and incredible. He rubbed his temple, wondering if all of this was going to give him a headache.

“None of this makes any sense,” he admitted wearily. Kairi shrugged.

“It’s all pretty bonkers, isn’t it? But you get used to it. You kind of have to.”

Ventus wasn’t at all sure about that. Learning how much time had passed and trying to get his head around that alone was difficult enough...now there were a million other new things to try and grasp on top of it. He could sort of understand that his heart had been inside of Sora, maybe, but all the rest of it...Nobodies? Roxas? A boy who looked just like him? And...

“Holding someone else inside your heart,” he said aloud. “I wonder what that even feels like…”

“It doesn’t feel like anything,” Kairi said at once. “You can’t even tell most of the time.”

“How do you know?”

“Because the same thing happened to me.” She pressed a palm over her heart, as if swearing a pledge. “I’ve got someone with me now, too. A girl named Naminé.”

“Whoa. Seriously?”

Kairi nodded.

“I didn’t really get to meet her, but Sora and Riku said she’s pretty cool. And she helped me get out of trouble after this jerk kidnapped me.”

Lea balked as Kairi jerked a thumb over at him.

“Why did you kidnap her?” Ventus asked, even more confused.

“That wasn’t me...I mean, yeah, okay, it was, but it was just—Look, she’s giving the wrong impression here, all right?”

“I can’t believe it either,” Kairi told Ventus, and though he didn’t know her well, he could still tell she was forcing herself to keep a serious tone. “Letting myself get kidnapped by the biggest dorknugget in the universe...It’s super embarrassing now that I’ve gotten to know him.”

“Hey, can it, princess. This ‘dorknugget’ can show you who’s boss any day.”

“Oh yeah? Like you ‘showed me’ in our last practice match?”

“That doesn’t...If we weren’t using Keyblades, I would’ve fried you to a crisp without even trying. With my eyes closed.”

“Mm-hmm. Keep telling yourself that...”

As they argued, Ventus’s attention wavered. He was beginning to realize just how deeply, excruciatingly hungry he was. His stomach felt more than empty—it felt like it was digesting itself from the inside out. He winced and clutched at his gut, trying to remember the last time he’d eaten even before the battle, and realized he couldn’t.

“Hey, Ven—are you okay?” Kairi asked, noticing his grimace of pain.

“Yeah, I’m okay, just...I feel like I’m starving.”

“Well, no wonder. You haven’t eaten in like ten years, right?”

“We can bring you food,” said Lea, but Kairi looked up at him.

“Why don’t we just take him downstairs? That way he can see the castle and meet people.”

“I’m not sure that’s a good idea…” Lea began, but Ventus sat up straighter.

“No, she’s right. I want to get up. I mean…I should try to walk anyway, shouldn’t I? I haven’t exercised in ten years, either...”

The two of them helped him to stand. It took trial and error; Ventus felt like someone had replaced all of his tendons with soggy noodles. After a few minutes he managed to hold on to the back of a chair to stay standing, and then tottered across the room into Kairi and Lea’s arms with a concentrated effort. A part of him felt embarrassed that these new Keyblade wielders’ first impressions of him were going to be of him flopping around weakly, barely able to walk, but neither Kairi nor Lea made fun of him at all. In fact they both seemed impressed that he was capable of doing even as much as he could.

“You ready, Ven?” Kairi asked him, holding on to his shoulder to keep him steady. Ventus stared up the corridor.

“Yeah. Let’s go for it.”

But he didn’t make it all the way there on his own—not even close. The first flight of stairs they tried sent him tumbling (Kairi quickly caught him), and after he’d sat down for a bit to recover, Lea carried him piggyback the rest of the way.

Ventus didn’t take much note of the castle (all he could really see was Lea’s voluminous hair), but what glimpses he did get gave him the idea that even if this place had been bustling and vibrant once, it was now mostly empty and little-used. They marched through seemingly endless hallways and stairwells before arriving at a closed door which, judging from the smells and muffled voices beyond, was a kitchen with people in it. Lea looked at Ven over his shoulder.

“The guys in here run this place,” he told him, “and they’re letting us hang out here for a little bit. But they’re...er, not exactly jazzed about it, so just...try and make a good impression, all right? Don’t tick anybody off.”

He set Ventus down, waiting until his wobbly legs would support him before letting him go. Ventus summoned every effort to keep himself on his feet, and after nodding to Kairi that he was okay, they entered the kitchen.

Ventus immediately realized that he had been the topic of conversation, since as soon as the door opened, everyone stopped talking all at once, and stared at the three of them in the doorway. Ventus hesitated, but Lea brushed past, announcing, “Hey, team. We need to rustle up some grub for the new kid. Got anything lying around?”

Without waiting for anyone’s reply, Lea started raiding the fridge.

To Ventus’s surprise, he recognized two of the four people in the kitchen right away—or rather he recognized their uniforms. He was sure they were the same as those of the castle guards that he’d run into on his last visit here, when he had been running around town looking for Mickey. But that at least made sense, unlike most everything else. If this was the castle of Radiant Garden, then of course the castle guards would be here.

“Lighten up, would you?” Lea was saying, digging through the fridge. “This kid hasn’t eaten anything since I was in junior high. You guys can spare a couple of bites.”

He pulled out a large ceramic dish and inspected the contents, then started scooping some into a bowl; it appeared to be some kind of beef and vegetable soup that had gone gelatinous in the chill of the fridge. In such a state it didn’t look very appealing, but Ventus couldn’t have cared less. He was so ravenous that he would have gladly scarfed down a whole platter of liver and onions.

Instead of putting the soup on the stove to reheat, Lea cast a spell to do the job instead, instantly filling the small kitchen with a wonderful smell that proved the soup was probably more appetizing than it looked. Ventus’s stomach growled loudly, and he tried not to think about how much it hurt, instead taking stock of the rest of the kitchen. It was way too small to be the main kitchen for such a huge castle; Ventus supposed it must have started life as a sub-kitchen, or part of the servants’ quarters.

There were two other people here besides the guards, one of whom—a tall, thin man with oddly large eyes—broke off saying something displeased to Lea in order to give Ventus a long, critical look.

“So. The enchanted sleeper wakes at last.” His scrutiny was peculiar, and unnerving; Ventus felt like something tiny being squinted at through a microscope. “Hmph. He really is exactly like our dearly departed Roxas, isn’t he?”

“You know Roxas?” Ventus asked, but the thought was pushed out of his head by the sight of the young man sitting at the table, reading a book and eating an omelette simultaneously. Ventus flopped down into the chair across from him to give his legs a break, trying not to gawk.

It couldn’t be. No way. There was just no way…

...but it had been twelve years...

The young man, though now older than Ventus, had kept the same odd, asymmetrical haircut that he’d had as a child, which was so distinctive that Ventus had recognized him by it at once. That and the fact that he still had a lab coat, though unlike the one he’d worn as a child, this one looked like it probably fit. It was draped over the back of his chair, and he was wearing a long-sleeved collared shirt with the sleeves rolled up, underneath a gray sweater vest. His general air was both authoritative and bookish, like a scholar of some kind.

“Something you find interesting?” the young man asked calmly, in between cutting bites of omelette with the side of his silver fork. Ventus was still goggling at him in amazement.

“I remember you. From before I fell asleep...You were that little kid.”

He held up the side of his hand against his body to indicate the height the young man had once reached.

“Beg pardon?”

Ventus struggled to think of how best to explain it. It was still hard to come to grips with the idea that, although he felt as if he had encountered all of these people fairly recently, to them he was just some boy they had once seen for a few minutes many years ago, and probably didn’t remember at all. He bit his lip, thinking of where to start.

“I came here a long time ago,” Ventus said, “and there were Unversed everywhere—monsters—and I saw them attacking you. So I fought them off. Do you remember that?”

The young man regarded him with sudden sharp curiosity, his fork hovering over his plate.

“No…” he said; Ventus had a funny feeling that he might be lying. “At least...I don’t believe so.”

“It definitely happened,” Ventus insisted. “There were a whole bunch of Unversed, and…”

He realized that the tall blond man (also in a lab coat) had stopped arguing with Lea, and was now watching him with intense interest.

“...and you were there too, sir,” Ventus said to him, hoping he sounded polite enough. “I don’t know if you remember, but, um...you thanked me for saving him, and you said…”

His eyes widened as the full weight of the memory dawned on him.

“But how did you  _ know?” _ he blurted.

“What are you talking about? How did I know what?”

“Before, when I met you both, you said...You said that you had a feeling that me and you were going to meet again someday.”

And here they were. It was so astonishingly prophetic that Ventus almost couldn’t believe his own memory; he hadn’t thought anything of the remark at the time, but…

“But how did you know that would happen?” he asked again. “That’s really amazing...”

“Did I really say that?” The man visibly went from displeased to smug. His smile was a little creepy. “Well, of course...genius  _ does  _ learn when to lean on one’s exceptional intuition...obviously I would have noticed at once that you were something quite out of the ordinary…”

He regarded Ventus with a much more approving sort of look than anything he’d offered previously.

“I’ll say, you’re rather more  _ respectful _ than seems to be the standard among Keyblade wielders...I suppose they were a different breed once upon a time.”

“So...this is actually a reunion of sorts,” said the young man across the table. “How very...interesting. Your name is...Ventus, isn’t it?”

“Yeah. You can call me Ven. Everyone else does.”

Ventus searched his memory, but unfortunately, it wasn’t complete.

“Um, I’m sorry...I forgot your name,” he admitted. “I just remember that you’re adopted...”

The young man choked on his omelette. Behind him, the long-haired guardsman gave a barking laugh, and Lea was smirking as he finally set a bowl of steaming-hot soup down in front of Ventus.

“Enough chit-chat, kid. Eat up. You’re gonna need it...you’ve got a looot of catching up to do.”


	3. Chapter 3

Lea was right—Ven had a lot to get used to.

The most immediate and challenging problem was his own body, which thanks to his long slumber didn’t work nearly as well as he needed it to. It took him most of the first day to be able to reliably walk again, and even once he’d mastered that, he continued to tire out much faster than usual. He was also clumsier, and sometimes his legs would give out for no reason, even if he didn’t feel like he was about to collapse. He had to take a shower sitting down, just to be safe.

Aqua’s welcome-awake gift turned out to be a beautiful sponge cake she’d made from scratch, stuffed with fresh whipped cream and rose-cut strawberries, and little icing buds piped along the sides that magically bloomed into flowers when she lit the single candle stuck on top.

“I know it isn’t much,” she told him, “and it doesn’t make up for how long I was away, but…” She smiled, and Ven caught a glimpse of the old, tender Aqua beneath the hard look her eyes now had. “I’m sorry for missing so many of your birthdays.”

Along with the cake, she gave him another gift, an ordinary mithril ring with runes etched into it that glowed blue when he first reached out and touched it.

“I put a special charm on it, like the one I put on our wayfinders. If you ever need me, then this will help me find you—even in the darkness.”

Ven tried to put on the ring, but it was a half-size too big. Aqua conjured a woven chain out of thin air and hung the ring around his neck.

“Promise me you’ll always keep this with you, Ven. So that if we ever get separated again…”

Ven wanted to say that wouldn’t happen again, but instead, he just nodded, his fingers closing around the ring like a talisman.

They spent the warm spring night snuggled with blankets and cocoa atop one of the castle’s many towers, remembering, talking, counting the stars. Ven had always liked stargazing, and pointed out his favorite constellations once he’d managed to find them; the hearts of the worlds were arranged differently here than they had been back home. But Aqua only seemed to notice the places where stars had gone missing.

In the morning, she left for Yen Sid’s tower.

“I have to go take care of some things now that you’re awake,” she told Ven in the courtyard, her helmet tucked under her arm. “You’ll be safe here for a few days with Lea and Kairi. They’ll look after you while you recover. And I put as many magical wards on this castle as I know, to make it extra safe.”

“But I want to go with you!” said Ven, even as his legs threatened to wobble out from beneath him. “Aqua...you can’t leave me behind again…”

“I won’t ever leave you like that, Ven. I promise.” She bent to one knee in her clanking armor, the better to peer into his face. “But you can’t fight in the condition you’re in right now. You need to spend a little time getting your strength back. Then you can come join the rest of us, and help protect the worlds.”

“But…”

“You need to recover, Ven. And...I have a favor to ask of you, too, while you’re here.”

“What is it?”

“I need you to look after Lea and Kairi for me, and make sure they don’t get into any trouble.” She touched the top of his head. “You’ve been a Keyblade wielder for longer than they have, so I’ll need you to help me and teach them what you know. Can you do that?”

“Yeah. Of course.”

“Thank you.” She smiled, letting go of him. “Work hard on getting strong again, Ven. I’ll be back soon. A week or two—no more than that.”

Ven believed her, but his chest still tightened as her glider disappeared into the void.

Despite Aqua’s departure, there turned out to be plenty in the new Radiant Garden to keep Ven occupied on top of trying to get his strength back. Kairi and Lea took him on a tour of the town which interested all three of them equally, since neither Kairi nor Lea knew this place well either. By far the most prominent building was a bar called 7th Heaven, owned and operated by a young woman named Tifa.

“Any friend of Sora’s is a friend of ours,” she told them, after seeing their Keyblades. She wouldn’t serve Ven or Kairi any alcohol, so Lea stuck to the same ginger beer that the two of them ordered.

In the street they met other members of the self-styled ‘Restoration Committee,’ a group of people who had lived here earlier and were trying to bring Radiant Garden back to its former glory. Ven recognized a few committee members from his previous visit, including an old wizard named Merlin, and a duck named Scrooge who owned a freezer business in the town square from which he also sold ice cream. Scrooge didn’t remember Ven’s account of their chance meeting all those years ago, but he had a good laugh when Ven produced the crumpled, stained Disney Town pass out of his jacket as evidence. He gave all of them free ice cream, and they enjoyed it together in the square, sitting on a stone wall. The ice cream’s unusual taste both surprised and pleased Ventus.

“It’s salty,” he said, studying the half-eaten bar, “but sweet, too.”

“Good stuff,” said Lea, chomping into his with relish.

They watched people come and go in the square, Ven listening while Lea and Kairi talked about their training (well, argued, mostly). Though the town hardly resembled the Radiant Garden that he remembered, the air still smelled of flowers, and with as weak as Ven currently was, it felt good to just sit in the sun and eat ice cream and smell flowers on the wind.

“You know, it’s kind of funny…” Kairi mused, after she finished her bar of ice cream. Ven looked over at her, still working on his.

“What is, Kairi?”

“Mmm...nothing.” She leaned back on the heels of her hands. “It’s just...Something about this reminds me of when me and Sora and Riku used to hang out, back home on the islands. We were always together, growing up. When we were done playing, we’d sit in a row like this, and just watch the waves, and talk…”

She smiled, remembering.

“I seriously miss those two dorks,” she said. “They’ve both been on all these crazy adventures without me, doing all this dangerous stuff…That’s why I have to train as hard as I can and get really good at using the Keyblade, too. I want to be able to fight alongside them. Sora, and Riku…”

Her smile turned a bit sad, but she shook herself out of it at once.

“You guys are cool, too,” she told Ven and Lea reassuringly. “Well, Ven is, at least…”

Lea reached over the shorter Ventus in order to poke Kairi’s head with his ice cream stick. Ven laughed.

“I sort of get what you mean,” he said. Being with two other people did feel familiar; it was the only arrangement that Ventus had ever known, or at least the only one he could remember. “Me and Terra and Aqua grew up together, too. We’re all best friends.”

“Funny how that works, huh?” said Kairi. “It’s like we’re each part of a trio.”

“Not me,” said Lea emphatically, waving his ice cream stick. “Used to always just be me n’ Roxas. And before that, me and…Well.”

He broke off, looking away and twirling the stick in his fingers. But he kept glancing back at Ventus with that same unusually intense look that Ventus had noticed the day before, and Ventus returned it curiously.

“Are you thinking about Roxas?” he guessed. Lea jerked as if he’d been stung.

“He totally is,” said Kairi. “You two look exactly the same. And you have the same voice and everything. It’s kind of weird.”

Lea gave Kairi another annoyed poke over Ven’s head.

“I gotta admit,” he said, “it _is_ a little spooky, sittin’ here having ice cream with you. It’s almost like…” He paused, then sighed in defeat. “Well...yeah. It’s almost like seeing Roxas again.”

He smiled at Ven, but Ven thought it looked rather forced.

“Maybe you’ll see Roxas someday,” Ven told him, trying to be encouraging. “He isn’t...dead or anything, right? He’s just with Sora. So...maybe he can come back, like I did.”

“You think?” Lea snorted, and a hint of the bitterness he’d tried to mask with his smile bled through his expression. “Nobodies aren’t even supposed to exist in the first place.”

“But you were a Nobody, and you came back, right?”

“It’s different with Sora and Roxas. They can’t exist at the same time.”

“How come?”

But Lea just snorted again, grimacing.

“I still don’t understand how it all works,” Ven admitted. “What do you think, Kairi?”

“Me?” Kairi tucked a strand of loose hair behind her ear. “About Nobodies? I don’t know...I don’t understand it very well either. It’s complicated, isn’t it?”

But she looked oddly shifty, and didn’t pursue the subject further.

Once Ventus finally finished his ice cream, the three of them hopped off the wall and set off. Since they had already seen the whole of the tiny town, Ven thought at first that they were going back to the castle, but instead Kairi led them onto the street that the bar was on. Although they walked at an easy pace, Ven still lagged behind the other two, tired and unsteady as he still was.

“There’s one more person you need to meet,” said Kairi over her shoulder. Lea realized where they were headed and jogged up alongside her.

“Let’s not, Kairi, all right? We just ate.”

“So? We’ll just say we’re not hungry.”

“You think that’ll actually work?”

As they debated ahead of him, Ven, tottering along behind on his unreliable legs, caught the word _Sora._

“We’re going to see Sora?” he asked, pushing himself to catch up to them.

“No,” said Kairi. “Sora’s not here. But his mom is.”

“His mom?”

They stopped at the low gate in front of one of the cottages at the far end of the street. Kairi unlatched it and let Ven through first.

“She’ll probably ask you a million questions,” Kairi warned. “She’s kind of like that. Just go with it.”

Sora’s mother was a brown-haired, brown-eyed, energetic woman with a smile that crinkled the corners of her eyes. She had been working in the back garden, but stopped what she was doing at Kairi’s call.

“So _you’re_ Ventus!” Beaming, she peered at Ven from beneath her large, floppy hat. “It’s very nice to meet you. I’ve heard so much about you—I’m glad you’re up.”

“Nice to meet you too, ma’am,” said Ven, not sure what else to say.

“So how are you feeling? How is everything up at the castle? Have you three had any lunch yet? I can throw a little something together if you’re hungry—”

Lea tried to orchestrate a quick getaway, to no avail. Soon the three were sitting on the back patio beside the surprisingly expansive garden, gulping lavender-infused lemonade and watching Ama dig up weeds as she talked. A fat brown chicken kept eyeing Lea suspiciously and pecking at his arm, much to Kairi and Ven’s amusement.

“You know, Ventus, you almost look a bit like Sora,” Ama remarked, pausing in her gardening to study his face. “I’m not sure what it is. I think you have the same eyes.”

“Sora?” Ven wiped his mouth on the sleeve of his jacket. “Really? Everyone else says I look like Roxas.”

“Well, maybe you do. I never met Roxas. But, let’s see...”

She pulled off her gloves and stepped into the cottage, returning with a well-worn photo album.

“I don’t have any recent pictures of him,” she lamented. “He’s grown up so much since he’s been gone...But here. This is Sora. Don’t you think you look similar?”

The album was indeed full of Sora, mostly as a young child. Sora climbing a coconut tree—Sora in a wooden fishing dinghy—Sora with a satchel on his first day of school—Sora and his friend Riku sword fighting with sticks—

“Hey now, hey now...what’s all this?”

Lea grinned and peered over Kairi and Ven’s heads at the photo album. Kairi tried to push the album away, but Lea grabbed it and held it up out of her reach.

“And who is this?” he asked aloud, still grinning as he stared at the album held open over his head. “Is that our _radiant_ Princess of Heart in her royal gown?”

Kairi swiped for the album, but missed, and Lea tossed it to Ventus, who caught it with both hands. In pride of place on the open page was a photo of Sora, Riku, and Kairi, all of whom looked seven or eight years old. Kairi was only recognizable by her red hair; most of her was encased in a huge, lumpy sphere of colorful papier-mâché that made her look like a radioactive blueberry. An oversized sparkly crown hung sideways off of her head, and instead of smiling she was holding as much air as she could in her red-painted cheeks.

“Oh, that! That was the end-of-year school play,” Ama said, “and Kairi had the lead role—Princess Pufferfish. Don’t you remember that, Kairi?”

Lea laughed, and Kairi gave his leg a playful knock with her heel, but Ventus was just as entertained by the two boys flanking her in the picture. Young Sora was grinning and holding out his arms to show off the paper tentacles dangling from his squid costume, while tiny Riku stared straight at the camera, looking broodingly serious despite being dressed as a bright pink dolphin, with face paint to match.

“Sora only had one line,” Ama recalled wistfully, “and he forgot it. But he was adorable anyway.”

“Didn’t realize you started your career so early, princess,” said Lea.

“Cut it out, doofus.”

“You first, pufferface.”

While Lea and Kairi bantered, Ama regaled Ven with stories about Sora—not about his many adventures with the Keyblade, but about his childhood and life on the Destiny Islands. It was strange to think that, technically speaking, Ven had been present inside Sora for most of these events; certainly he had no memory or conception of them. He just nodded along and made vague noises of agreement during pauses, and once all the lemonade had been drunk, Kairi managed to extract them from the cottage with many thanks and promises to return.

“She seems nice,” said Ven, as they set off up the street.

“She’s super nice,” Kairi agreed. “And she’s a really good cook, too. Better than my mom. I always like going over to Sora’s for dinner more than eating at home.”

They made it back to the market square, where Kairi stopped to buy a pair of cute earrings in an item shop that were enchanted to protect against Fire spells, joking that she would need them during training. She didn’t put them on, however; she just stuck the small paper bag in one of her pockets, and the three of them set off through the square, keeping a slow pace so that Ven wouldn’t have any trouble. They were so engrossed in talking that none of them noticed the small creature stalking them by crawling along the nearby stone wall. At least, not until it leaped off the wall and onto Ventus’s head.

_“Ven!”_ it cried.

The sudden blow almost knocked Ven flat, but Kairi caught him with one hand and drew her Keyblade in the other before a dazed Ventus could even register what had happened. The missile that had hit him bounced off of his head and landed at their feet, revealing itself to be a creature about the size of a dog with bluish fur, six legs, and a grinning mouth full of sharp teeth.

“What is this thing?” Lea asked, as it sat down in front of them, blocking their way. “It doesn’t look like a Heartless, but…”

“Hang on…” Ven rubbed the impact spot on his head. “You’re...Hey! You’re that creature from the ship! The experiment!”

The creature nodded eagerly, making a disconcerting cackling noise that seemed to express happiness.

“Ven!” it said again. “Good see...Ven. Long time.”

“You remember me?” Ven asked, surprised—and surprised too that the snarling creature had learned to speak. The alien nodded faster.

“Ven good! Ven fren. No forget...fren.”

It pointed to itself with the uppermost pair of its six legs.

“Me call...Stitch now. Name Stitch.”

“Stitch, huh?” Ven grinned. “Good to see you again, Stitch! I’m glad you got away from those guys who were chasing you.”

He indicated the two people on either side of him.

“Stitch, this is Kairi, and Lea. They’re my new friends.”

Stitch blinked in confusion, looking between Kairi and Lea’s faces as if trying to recognize them.

“Ven fren...A-ku-wa? Ter-ra?”

“No...Kairi,” Ven pointed, “and Lea. Aqua and Terra aren’t here.” He tried to keep his smile from faltering at the thought. “Aqua left for a few days, that’s all. And Terra…”

He tried to think of what to say.

“I can’t go see Terra,” was all he came up with. His shoulders slumped.

But instead of mimicking Ven’s dejection, Stitch perked up, his nose twitching like a rabbit’s.

“Why no see...Ter-ra? Stitch...see Terra. Here.”

“What?”

Stitch pointed behind him with one leg at the distant castle. “In castle. See Terra.”

Ven’s pulse quickened.

“What—what are you talking about?” he asked Stitch. “Where did you see Terra? When?”

“Hold on a minute—” Lea said, but Ventus was too excited to pay him any heed. Stitch picked up on Ven’s excitement, waving his antennae in every direction.

“Ven want see Terra?”

“Of course I do!” Ven knelt to Stitch’s eye level, but Lea bent and put a hand on Ven’s shoulder.

“Hey, I don’t think this is a good idea, kiddo. He doesn’t really mean—”

“Can you show me?” Ven asked Stitch, pushing Lea’s hand off of his shoulder. “Can you take me to Terra?”

“Ven—”

But Stitch was nodding excitedly, and Ven’s heart leaped into his throat. He ignored Kairi and Lea and took off running after Stitch when the little creature bounded away up the street, but Ven could only manage one brief burst of speed before his whole body started shaking and his knees threatened to buckle. Ahead of him, Stitch stopped and turned around, perplexed.

“Can you...slow...down?” Ven called through gasps. “I can’t...run…”

Stitch appraised him disapprovingly, then leaped up, grabbed the back of his jacket, and took off.

Ven cried out, but the wind tore his voice away. All he could hear was Stitch’s delighted laughter as the whole world bounced and jostled with each of Stitch’s explosive forward leaps. The tiny alien was carrying Ventus on his back with two of his six claws as easily as if Ven were an empty backpack, and wind whipped through Ven’s hair and clothes as he yelled, the ground and sky springing up and down rhythmically, as if he had been strapped onto a roller coaster that had only barely passed its safety inspection. In between bounces he glimpsed Kairi and Lea chasing after them, already distant.

“Go—see—fren!” Stitch crowed, picking up speed.

Ven cried out extra loudly when Stitch leaped onto the side of a building, scuttling along it with Ven hanging down sideways in his grasp before leaping back onto the ground. A wave of heat passed by as Stitch leaped high over a wall of dancing flames that had sprung up in their path, skittering away up the cracked and broken roadway that sloped up the hill towards the castle. Lea and Kairi were soon out of sight, and Ven had to close his eyes to try and fight off nausea from how much the whole world was swimming.

The walk up to the castle from town normally took twenty minutes; they got there in under ten. Ven nearly knocked his head on the lintel as Stitch bounded through the first open door he found and scrambled off down the corridors, slowing only slightly during sharp turns. He seemed to be looking for something, because he sometimes skidded to a halt and doubled back the way they’d already come, running up and down different forks in the halls. At one point they nearly bowled over the tall scientist in a lab coat.

_“What in the worlds—”_

But before Ven could try and call an explanation out, he disappeared around a corner.

Their mad dash ended abruptly a couple of minutes later. Stitch dove down a hallway and slid to a halt, coming to rest inside a room at the end of a hall. Before Ven’s head could stop reeling, Stitch set him down not quite gently enough, so that Ven yelped when his tailbone hit the floor. A disoriented Ven had to take a minute to let the dizziness pass, shaking his head and finally staggering to his feet, holding onto the wall to support himself.

They had arrived in a small circular room lined with half-bare bookshelves, with an empty chair and desk in the center, and a few of the diagrams on the wall hanging slightly askew. It could have been the office of a professor on sabbatical.

A huge, flat object draped in layers of cloth leaned against the wall. Stitch sniffed at it intently, then wriggled behind the cloth and gave an excited cry. The cloth was ripped away and thrown aside, revealing the object to be a massive portrait in a heavy gilded frame.

Stitch scrabbled up the frame and perched on top of it, jabbing a claw at the canvas below.

“Ta-da!” he said, looking pleased with his big surprise. “Terra! Ven fren...Terra!”

Ventus gaped.

“But…” His eyes widened. “That isn’t Terra...is it?”

He stepped backwards to see better, since the enormous portrait was almost twice as tall as he was in its dusty, ornate frame. The young man in the painting had brown eyes and silver hair, and he was dressed formally in a way Terra never would have done, and that didn’t look right on him to Ventus.

But...it was definitely him. His unsmiling face was unmistakeable, and the cut of his features remained exactly the same, even if his hair and eyes had changed color.

“Terra?” Stitch prodded, waving his antennae curiously. Ven hesitated, then nodded, still staring at the painting.

“Yeah. You’re right. This is...Terra...”

He stepped forward, reaching out a hand to touch the portrait hesitantly, as if afraid his touch would make it suddenly come alive. Ven ran his hand over the canvas, brushing his fingertips against Terra’s dusty face, gazing in disquieted wonder at his brown eyes.

He knew, or thought he knew, what this must be. This must be what Terra had become, after Xehanort had taken control of him. A stranger with a face he only thought he knew. Ventus tried hard to see the Terra he remembered in the painted image, but all the tiny details were wrong—not just the hair and the eyes but something in the familiar face, something in the small frown. He didn’t look exactly like Terra looked when Terra was frowning. This Terra in the portrait was...distant, somehow. Clinical.

The painting engrossed Ven so deeply that that he only turned around when the shouting and banging from the corridor behind him grew too loud to ignore. Kairi and Lea burst through the open door and, seeing him standing there in one piece, both collapsed. Kairi bent double and clutched at her side, while Lea fell over the desk in the center of the room, wheezing.

“Don’t...don’t _do_ that, Ven!” Kairi managed, straightening up but keeping a hand on her side. “If anything happens to you, the master’s gonna kill us!”

On top of the portrait, Stitch giggled furiously. Ven returned his attention to the image of Terra, and Kairi and Lea, once they recovered, joined him on either side.

“Hey, I recognize this guy.” Kairi put her fists on her hips, tilting her head. “This is Xemnas, isn’t it? Or...that other half of him, Ansem.”

She looked over at Lea for confirmation, but Lea only shrugged.

“Same difference, isn’t it?” he said. “Heads and tails.”

“You’re the one who would know. Wasn’t he your boss?”

Lea pulled a face, piquing Ven’s interest.

“Your boss?” he asked. “What do you mean?”

“It’s not important,” said Lea, but as usual, Kairi filled in an explanation where he wouldn’t.

“When Lea was a Nobody,” she told Ven, “he was in this special club for Nobodies called the Organization. And this guy—” she nodded to the portrait, “I mean, this guy’s Nobody—was his boss.”

“The Organization?” asked Ven, surprised. “But, I thought that was what Master Xehanort was calling his...” (His what? Group? Team?)

“That’s the new Organization. Lea was in the old Organization.” Kairi nodded. “They broke up awhile ago because Sora defeated them all. And they didn’t really get anything done anyway. Right, Lea?”

“You’re exaggerating a little there, princess. We did get _some_ stuff done.”

“Yeah? Like what?”

“Well, like...um. Hrm.”

Lea rubbed at his hair, visibly stumped.

“It doesn’t matter,” he declared. “All that’s over and done with. All we’ve gotta worry about nowadays is Organization 2.0.”

He regarded the portrait grimly, folding his arms.

“So...This guy was your friend before he was Xehanort, huh?”

“Yeah.” Ven tried to read Lea’s expression, but it was difficult, as Lea was so much taller. “You...knew him, Lea?”

“Knew him? Well, uh...I definitely met him.” Lea scratched behind one ear. “I dunno if any of us could really say that we _knew_ him, exactly. He was really, erm...private.”

“Did he ever…” A thought had occurred to Ven, and his voice turned urgent. “Did he ever act like Terra? Could you tell there was someone else inside him? Like maybe—maybe Terra was trying to get out?”

“Whaddya mean? Act like how, exactly?”

“Terra was…” Ven stopped, correcting himself. “Terra _is_ really strong, and nice. He always works really hard, and he’s always worried about me, and he always wants to be sure that I’m okay. He’s like…” Ven’s throat tightened; he fought against it. “He’s like my brother. Was...Did this Terra ever act like that?”

Lea laughed an unpleasantly mirthless laugh.

“Whoo boy. Um...not exactly, kid, no. He was a pretty, um...Not a real nice guy. I don’t really wanna go into it, but...”

“And _what_ do the three of you think that you’re doing?”

They all turned. Even stood in the doorway to the study, glaring.

“Why are you in here?” he asked suspiciously. “What business do you have in this place?”

“Calm down. We’re just checking out the decor.” Lea gestured to Ven. “Ventus here was getting a good look at his old buddy Terra.”

Even’s angry gaze flitted between the three of them and the portrait several times, but the sight of the portrait obviously bothered him, and he set his jaw and kept his glare firmly on the three of them—or rather on Lea, whom he seemed to think was the source of all the trouble.

“You shouldn’t go poking around where you aren’t wanted,” he sneered. “I would have thought you’d have learned that lesson already.”

“What? Can’t hurt to give the kid a look-see at this guy, can it?” Lea asked, jerking a thumb over his shoulder at the huge portrait. “Unless...maybe you wanna stay and answer some questions for him? About Xehanort?”

This made Even choke down whatever his next complaint had been. He glared at Lea, who gazed back without the slightest sign of intimidation, arms folded and smirking wryly.

“I think not,” Even said, scowling harder. “But regardless, the three of you should have the courtesy not to go tearing about the place like a pack of delinquents.”

He noticed Stitch sitting on top of the portrait frame.

“And no one gave you permission to bring animals into the castle,” he added sharply. “Get that filthy thing out of here at once.”

Stitch’s ears stood up. Instead of growling, however, he broke into a wide, sharp-toothed grin, wriggled his back end, and launched himself across the room at Even’s face, claws outstretched.

Even yelped and ducked, and Stitch sailed over him—but then Stitch twisted in midair and grabbed the tail of his lab coat in four of his six claws, pulling hard. His strength was many times his size, and Even was yanked out of the doorway as if shot from a cannon. Stitch bounded away, half-dragging the hapless scientist with him.

_“Unhand me, you wretched little monster!”_

The combined noise of Stitch’s gleeful laughter and Even’s indignant shrieking disappeared up the corridor. Lea laughed so hard that he couldn’t breathe, and had to hold on to the side of the desk for support.

“Won’t we get in trouble?” Ven asked, worriedly staring up the hallway. “You said we had to make a good impression while we’re staying here…”

“Don’t sweat it, kid,” Lea assured him. “You don’t have to be _too_ nice to these guys. They deserve to get their feathers ruffled a little bit.”

He chuckled and brushed off the sleeve of his jacket as Kairi sat on the edge of the desk, swinging her legs. Ven joined her, not wanting his own legs to suddenly give out under him as they had been doing.

“So that’s Terra, huh?” Kairi said, studying the huge portrait. “Stuck with Xehanort...That must be awful.”

Lea folded his arms behind his neck. “We’ll have to pull his fat outta the fryer somehow. The master’s looking for a way.”

Ventus nodded, but didn’t say anything, merely staring into the portrait’s uncanny brown eyes. More than anything, he wanted to just blithely agree, but after everything that had happened and everything he’d been told about, he didn’t quite have it in him to muster up his usual optimism. Aqua’s voice echoed darkly in his head.

_He might have been destroyed, too. Maybe a long time ago._

“Ven?”

Kairi nudged him gently, looking concerned. Ven snapped out of it.

“Sorry,” he said. “I was just thinking…”

“You’re really worried about your friend, aren’t you?”

Ven nodded. To his surprise, Kairi thumped him on the back.

“Join the club,” she said. “You and me and Lea have that in common. The reason we’re all here doing this...It’s because we want to help our friends.”

She looked to Lea, as if expecting to say something encouraging in agreement, but he only shrugged and nodded.

“You’ll definitely see the real Terra again,” Kairi told Ven. “I don’t know how, but...we’ll make it happen. We’ve got to.”

“Yeah,” Ven said. The portrait’s dark eyes were empty and cold. “I hope so.”


	4. Chapter 4

Ventus began training with Kairi and Lea as soon as he could trust his legs to support him for longer than half an hour at a time. The two fledgling Keyblade wielders had plenty of drills to practice even without a proper teacher around, and Ven himself wanted more than anything to get back to normal as quickly as he could.

He had more reason to train hard than he’d ever had before. At his strongest and most determined, he’d only just barely managed to defeat Vanitas...and now he was going to have to fight not only Master Xehanort himself, but lots more versions of him, too. The prospect made even simple practice exercises feel more urgent than the most sophisticated lessons his late master had given him. Eraqus had taught discipline and technique, and under him, Ven’s goal had been to mold himself into a well-rounded master. Now Eraqus was dead, and Ven’s goal was no longer to perfect technique or to gain mastery, but to fight for survival. Aqua was counting on him to get strong again—and so too, he hoped, was Terra.

The three trainees decided to meet in one of the rear courtyards just after sunrise and use it as their practice field. Lea complained that there was no need to get started so early without any masters around to enforce it, but Ven and Kairi overrode him, impatient as they both were to improve themselves. Lea learned after the first day that the other two wouldn’t hesitate to start without him if he turned up late, and from then on he always arrived on time, even if he had bags under his eyes and was groggily chewing on one last slice of toast.

From the first session, Ven found it strange to have a pair of training partners less skilled than he was. He’d always lagged behind Aqua and Terra, being younger and less experienced, but Kairi and Lea had only been training for a couple of months each. Ven soon realized that he knew many mid-level techniques neither of them had yet been taught, and he did his best to show them everything he could, even if he couldn’t always explain it as well as Aqua or Terra or Master Eraqus might have been able to.

“You have to hold the Keyblade like this,” he told Kairi, demonstrating, “and kind of—cast the spell through your palm, so it goes down the blade.”

He cast a Blizzard spell to demonstrate, cloaking his Keyblade in shimmering ice.

“So now if I throw it—” he did so, and the icy Keyblade shone in the morning sun as it wheeled across the courtyard, “—anything you hit gets hit with the spell, too. See?”

His spinning Keyblade nicked the wooden post he’d aimed at, transferring the Blizzard spell onto it and encasing it in a block of ice before the blade disappeared altogether, summoned back into his hand.

“Okay, now you guys both try.”

Lea got the hang of it at once, provided he was casting fire, but Kairi had a bit more trouble.

“I’ve never done any magic before I started training,” she admitted to Ven, struggling to get the hang of channeling the spell through the Keyblade. Her casts of Thunder kept sparking onto the ground or off to the side instead of sticking to the blade.

“Well, then you’re doing really good for someone who only just started learning,” Ven said, and meant it. “Just try it with whatever magic you think you’re good at so far. Most people are best at one or two kinds.”

Kairi took aim at the broken post (thawed and slightly charred after Lea’s successful hits with Fire Raid) and stuck her tongue out of the corner of her mouth, concentrating. Ven expected any of the basic elements, maybe Fire or another crack at Thunder; instead Kairi’s Keyblade glowed softly and then brighter, blindingly white, until Ven had to shield his eyes from it as she hurled it with a cry. Through his fingers he saw the spinning Keyblade just miss the post and vanish, but it sprayed beams of solid light the whole way.

“Hey...that was really good!” he said, blinking away the spots from his vision as Kairi’s Keyblade appeared back in her hand. “I’ve never seen that before. It’s like a...Holy Raid, or something.”

“I missed…”

“Yeah, but that spell…Light magic isn’t easy. I didn’t even get to start trying it until my third year training.”

Kairi raised her free hand and curled it into a fist, then opened it again. In her palm glowed a pearlescent orb of pure light, reminding Ven of the orbs that Eraqus had conjured for Aqua and Terra’s exam, only in miniature.

“I’m still learning,” Kairi admitted, “but the master’s been showing me how to tap into the light. She said that since my heart was born pure light, I should be able to do a lot more with it than most people. I just have to learn how to control it.”

“That makes sense,” Ven said, nodding. Kairi banished the orb. “I don’t think there’s ever been a Princess of Heart who was also a Keyblade wielder before…At least, we never learned about it in our history lessons.”

“That’s what Yen Sid said too. My heart is ‘special,’ because I’m one of the seven.”

Ven thought he caught the faintest flicker of something odd in Kairi’s face, but it was gone at once, and she grinned and held up her Keyblade, pointing it at the post.

“Let’s keep going, huh? I can’t let Lea beat me that easy. Come on, show me the move again.”

* * *

Ven, Kairi, and Lea’s training greatly interested the rest of the castle’s inhabitants, and from the first session, the trainees usually had at least one audience member at all times. Even was fascinated by the technicalities of the Keyblade, and constantly scribbled notes as he watched, stationed either atop the steps that led down to the courtyard or on the balcony that overhung it for a better view. Sometimes Ienzo joined him (though he generally didn’t take notes), but most often, it was either one or both of the royal guards who observed the proceedings. Neither of them was much impressed with what they saw.

“If this is where our hope for the worlds lies,” Dilan said to Aeleus, watching the three’s clumsy sparring on the first morning, “we might as well all draft our wills while we’re able.”

After three days of constant observation (accompanied by occasional snippets of ridicule, depending on the observer), Lea had had enough. When laughter rang out from the balcony after Kairi managed to knock him flat onto his rear, Lea dusted himself off and marched over to the edge of the courtyard to glare up at the uninvited audience.

“Don’t you guys have anything better to do?” he called to them. “We’re kinda busy down here! Don’t need any comments from the peanut gallery!”

“You don’t seem to be making much headway on this ‘hero’ business,” came Even’s voice from above. Lea tugged off his yellow bandanna, mopping sweat from his face.

“Yeah, well, at least I’m trying, aren’t I?”

Defiant, he rolled up the bandanna and tied it around his forehead into a sweatband, stomping off to go rejoin Kairi and Ven. Ven made as if to resume what they’d been working on, but to general surprise, Kairi swapped places with Lea, trooping over to stand beneath the balcony and shield her eyes from the morning sun as she gazed up at it.

“Hey, do you guys wanna come down?” she called.

Aeleus and Dilan glanced at each other, and Even stopped taking notes. They all then looked to Ienzo, who leaned over the balcony, careful not to spill his coffee.

“I’m sorry?” he asked loudly. “Come down for what, exactly?”

Kairi put a fist on her hip with the hand not holding her flowery Keyblade.

“If you guys are so interested in Keyblades and stuff, why don’t you help us train? We could use some actual combat practice! That’s what we’re training for in the first place!”

“And why would you want our help?” Even asked.

“All of you guys can fight, can’t you? Weren’t you in the Organization with Lea?”

She pointed off to the side with her Keyblade at Lea, who looked as taken aback at her audacity as everyone on the balcony.

“Either come help us,” she called up to them, “or stop watching all the time! It’s kind of weird!”

“Any one of us would be more than a match for you weaklings,” said Dilan.

“Hey now—” Lea tried, offended; Kairi cut him off.

“Oh yeah? I thought that Sora beat all you guys!”

She slung her Keyblade over her shoulders, waiting for an answer.

“Why, the nerve of—” Even began, but was interrupted by Dilan vaulting over the balcony and landing with perfect grace in the courtyard fifteen feet below, the wind having caught him gently.

“Are you certain of what you’re asking, girl?” he asked, his tone faintly menacing.

Kairi jutted her chin, undaunted.

“Yeah, I am. I’m not scared. Let’s do it!”

Perhaps weeks of training alongside the cocky, lighthearted Lea had given Kairi a false sense of what to expect from retired members of the Organization. Dilan’s casual blast of wind caught her completely by surprise, and she cried out as she rolled over and over, knocking her knees and elbows against the rough stone of the courtyard, coming to rest on her back with her arms and legs splayed and her Keyblade several feet away.

But when she scrambled to her feet, she was grinning, and wiped away grit that had embedded in her scraped cheek.

“That’s more like it! That’s the kind of stuff we’ll have to deal with out there.”

She called her own Keyblade back to her as Lea scratched at his hair.

“Erm, you sure about this, princess?” he asked her.

“Definitely. This is what Sora and Riku are used to...so this is what I need to get used to, too.”

The other three apprentices came down into the courtyard, ostensibly just to watch, but it wasn’t long before the sheer novelty of the request made them concede to it. Kairi practiced the throwing moves Ven had taught her on piles of ice that Even conjured, while Aeleus and Ienzo worked with Lea—meaning that Ienzo offered amused commentary as Aeleus solemnly blocked every hit of the Keyblade that Lea attempted, finally knocking him flying into some bushes with one idle blow from his Skysplitter. 

Ventus wound up paired with Dilan, who so far Ven had judged to be the most intimidating of the castle’s residents. Aeleus was taller and probably stronger, but his presence had a sort of calm steadiness to it that made him seem approachable despite his huge stature. Dilan, however, kept himself closed off, and that attitude made him more intimidating than his size alone.

“Well, boy,” said the guardsman, summoning a long lance out of thin air, “show me what you’re made of. Surely you haven’t forgotten everything you knew during that long nap of yours.”

Ven hadn’t forgotten anything, no—but that didn’t mean his body was willing or able to do the things he asked. He was much better now than he’d been right after he’d woken, but he still couldn’t dart or dodge nearly as fast as he wanted to, and it was all he could do to avoid the glinting point of the lance as it struck for him again and again like a steel cobra. He barely managed to knock the point aside with his Keyblade when he paused for air, gasping.

“I usually fight better than this,” Ven insisted, touching a stitch in his side.

“Do you? I’ll believe it when I see it. Come—again.”

Ven shifted his grip on his Keyblade, preparing himself. The air stirred all around them, kicking up dirt and dust and young spring leaves that had been torn off the branches too early, cloaking Dilan in a protective barrier. His lance had gone, and he clasped his hands behind his back and regarded Ven coolly, as if already bored.

“I won’t attack,” he said. “See if you can break through to me.”

Ven sized up the wind barrier. It seemed stronger and denser than even the best Aeroga spell he’d ever cast himself.

“Okay then...How about... _ this!” _

He raised his Keyblade, rushing forward—and a hailstorm of lances rained down around him from above. The Keyblade was knocked out of his hand as he was slammed to the ground, abruptly finding himself sitting down on the hard stone of the courtyard, his wind-shielded opponent in front of him standing twice as tall.

He scrambled backwards, or tried to, but his spine hit something at once. The lances had impaled the ground in a circle, trapping him as if in a cage, and if he were to try and move too far in any direction, he was in danger of cutting himself on their shining edges that stuck out of the ground all around him. 

He looked up as Dilan’s shadow fell over him.

“Hey, you said you wouldn’t attack! That wasn’t fair!”

“Fair? Hmph. You’re preparing for battle, not playing at sport. Do you think that Xehanort will fight fairly when you face him? Do you think he’ll keep his word?”

The cage of lances disappeared in a burst of wind, nearly making Ven topple backwards when the one at his back vanished. Wincing, he staggered to his feet, forcing himself not to sway.

“You’re right,” he admitted, and returned the guard’s scowl with equal stubbornness. “Xehanort won’t fight fair. That’s why I have to get stronger...as strong as I can.” He summoned his Keyblade back. “Let’s do that again. I’ll get it right this time.”

But to Ven’s dismay, his resolve was worth nothing. Not only could Dilan block every attack Ven attempted, but he could do it with such ease that he didn’t even have to move from the spot he started from. He simply stood there with his arms folded behind his back, watching Ven scramble and dart all around him, seeking an opening and never finding one, for the swirling winds that protected him also carried six lances that blocked and slashed at Ven whenever he tried to break through. Once, only once, did Ven managed to nearly pierce the veil surrounding him, and when he did, the much older and stronger man knocked him away with one blow of the arm, powerful and dismissive, like throwing aside a bounding dog. When Ven recovered, Dilan had returned to his unconcerned pose, and all six lances hovered around him with their points aimed downward at Ven.

“Do you surrender?” he asked.

“Not a chance!” Surrender definitely wouldn’t be an option with Xehanort, either. Ven grit his teeth and pushed himself back to his feet.

Dilan smirked.

“Again,” he said, catching two of his floating lances in one hand.

They kept sparring, but nothing that Ven tried to do worked. In his mounting frustration, he pretended that instead of the royal guardsman standing there shielded by wind, it was really Master Xehanort, and that if he could just break through and land even one hit on him, he would have to give Terra back. Pretending this didn’t improve Ven’s tactics any, but it gave him the strength to dig deep and force himself upright every time he got knocked down— 

“Again.”

The wind was stronger than all but his own most advanced conjurations, so thick and fast that it threw Ven aside if the edge of the tight whirlwind-shield so much as grazed him—

“Again.”

Two lances knocked away Ven’s thrown Keyblade. He called it back and rolled to avoid two more lances impaling themselves into the spot where he’d stood, but the shaft of the fifth one knocked into him sideways like a limbo bar, slamming him to the ground—

“Again.”

The swirling lances parted just enough as they rearranged themselves to show Ven an opening. He dodged to the side and then lunged with his Keyblade, following through the strike with his whole bodyweight—and cried out as the very tip of a lance grazed the side of his face, slicing a gash in his cheek like a razor blade drawn across the skin.

It happened so quickly that he felt more surprise than pain, and the wound only burned when he stopped and staggered. He shook it off, seeing the opening still there, and dove at the layer of roaring wind that surrounded his calm enemy like a shell—

“Whoa, whoa,  _ whoa!  _ Hold the phone!”

A whirling chakram knocked the closest hovering lance away. Lea threw himself in front of Ven, stopping his charge, Lea’s other chakram held in his hand. It burst into flames, and Dilan’s wind shield died down.

“Knock it off!” Lea snapped, pointing the sizzling chakram at Dilan. “Don’t hurt the kid, all right? What are you trying to pull?”

“I’m not hurt,” Ven said, even as he grit his teeth and touched the gash on his cheek. Despite the pain, it was quite shallow, and a healing spell banished the cut without effort. “It just scratched me, that’s all.”

“Looked to me like you almost got skewered through the head.” Lea called his first chakram back to him, grimacing at Ven’s collection of bruises that he hadn’t yet had time to Cure away. “What’s the big idea, Dilan?”

“The boy requested more aggressive instruction,” said Dilan dryly, still standing with his hands behind his back, as calm as if he were only observing from the balcony. Lea swung his chakrams on the tips of two fingers, ready to throw them again if needed.

“Okay, well, there’s aggressive and then there’s—look, tone it down, will you? The kid needs to stay in one piece.”

“Stop calling me  _ kid,”  _ Ven grumbled, still extremely frustrated at having been unable to do anything at all to his opponent. Bruises aside, he was tired and aching, and covered in sweat. “I’ve been a Keyblade wielder longer than you have. It’s fine, I’m the one who asked him to—”

“It’s not fine. Are you nuts? You think Master Aqua would be okay with this?”

“Aqua’s not here,” Ven retorted. “And she told me to train as hard as I can, right? She needs me to get stronger.”

“You can get stronger without getting chopped up into sushi.”

Lea glared at Dilan, who said nothing, his gaze half-lidded.

“Come on, kid,” Lea told Ven, catching his arm, “come with me. You’ve been pushing it all morning, you need a break—”

“I don’t want a break,” Ven said, wrenching his arm out of Lea’s grasp. Why was Lea making such a fuss all of a sudden? “I’ve been asleep for so long…”

“Exactly. All this stuff is too much for you right now. You gotta work your way up to—” 

“But don’t you understand? I can’t slack off. Xehanort has Terra. If I’m not strong enough, if I can’t fight him—then Terra will be destroyed. He’s counting on me.”

“I get that, but—”

“Xehanort’s not gonna go easy on me just because I’ve been asleep. I already fought Vanitas, Xehanort tore me in half and I shouldn’t even be alive—”

“Listen—”

“—and if I don’t get stronger, Aqua said I can’t go fight! She’ll probably leave me behind again and try to defeat Xehanort all by hers—”

“Damn it, Roxas, will you just  _ listen _ for a second? I’m trying to look out for you, all right?”

But Lea’s upset expression melted off like candle wax as he realized what he’d said. He turned away and set his jaw, his face flushing crimson.

“Sorry, Ven,” he said. “My bad.”

Ven didn’t answer, and after giving him a strained look, Lea muttered something that Ven couldn’t make out and stormed away, his chakrams disappearing out of his hands in a flash of fire.

Ven realized he was trembling with exhaustion.

“I’m  _ not  _ Roxas,” he declared, wiping the dried trickle of blood off of the side of his neck. “I don’t care if he looked like me. That’s not my fault. I am me—nobody else.”

He glared up at the nearby Dilan, and to his surprise, the guardsman returned his angry gaze with something that, while stern, was almost pleased as well. Ven rubbed at the bloody spot on his cheek where the lance had cut him, though no evidence of the wound remained.

Frustration simmered inside him, kindling a muted repeat of that odd, intense pain in his heart that he’d felt when he first woke up. He wasn’t Roxas, he didn’t even know who Roxas was—and yet a tiny voice in his gut added pity to his anger as he watched Lea walk as far away as possible, all the way across the courtyard. If Lea’s friend was gone, and Ven looked and sounded exactly like him, then wasn’t it only natural that he’d panic at seeing Ven get hurt?

Would Ven himself react any better, he wondered, if the roles were reversed? If instead of meeting Lea here, he’d met a person who looked and sounded exactly like Terra, Terra who was locked inside a heart and might never come out again…Could he see Terra’s face and hear Terra’s voice and spend hours at Terra’s side and yet never, never, never forget that it wasn’t really Terra at all?

“Do you want to continue?”

Dilan’s voice cut through Ven’s brooding. The question had been asked flatly, with hardly any curiosity and no sympathy whatsoever, but Ven nodded up at the tall man, hands curling into fists at his sides.

“Yeah. I want to get—I have to get stronger.”

Across the courtyard, Lea had gone back to doing drills by himself, seemingly having tired of getting the stuffing knocked out of him. Kairi had taken a break and was holding her Keyblade out in front of her with both hands, showing it off and talking to Even, who furiously took reams of notes.

“Lea doesn’t get it,” Ven said bitterly. “This isn’t for fun. Xehanort is evil. He doesn’t care about anything except getting what he wants, and if we can’t stop him…”

The strange pain in his heart flared hotter, a streak of fear swirling into the original anger. Eraqus telling him he needed to die in order to keep the worlds safe, and Vanitas laughing at him as he struck blows so hard that Ven reeled, and the way that Master Xehanort had smiled malevolently, welcomingly, at the three of them as he strolled across the barren Keyblade Graveyard…

“I used to be Xehanort’s...servant,” Ven said aloud, realizing that Dilan probably didn’t know this yet. ‘Student’ wasn’t the right word, not after Eraqus had shown him what a teacher-student relationship was supposed to be. “I don’t remember much from back then, but I know that he hurt me a lot. And when he couldn’t use me anymore, he threw me away. But…”

He summoned his Keyblade.

“But he doesn’t own me anymore. And I’m not going to let him have his way and just take whatever he wants. Especially my friends...”

The thought of Terra dying from the inside out made the corners of his eyes prickle. He shook his head, and the threat passed.

“I can’t speak to the Xehanort that you know,” came Dilan’s voice. “But the man I knew never suffered anyone to challenge his ambitions and live to tell the tale. If there are truly many more of him now, then things won’t be easy for you who choose to defend the light.”

“We have to try,” said Ven fiercely. “He tore me apart and tried to make me into a weapon, and—and killed my master, and took my home away, and Terra...” He gripped the Keyblade so tightly it hurt. “We can’t let Xehanort get his way just because he’s stronger than us. We can’t.”

He realized how tired he already was, but didn’t let himself succumb to it or sit down. Xehanort wouldn’t care if he was tired; Xehanort would cut him down without a second thought.

Ven’s anger began ebbing away, and with it, the strange pain in his heart. He reached up with his free hand and rubbed at his chest until the sensation dimmed to nothing, then let his hand fall.

“Will you teach me?” he asked Dilan. “All that stuff you were doing earlier, with the wind…I’ve never seen anyone use it like that before.”

“I’ve made a long study of it. Fighting was my only business for a good many years.”

“I want to be able to do all of that, too. Can you teach me how?”

“No. Such advanced techniques would be beyond you.”

“How do you know? I’m good at wind magic. I always have been.”

“I’ll be the judge of that.” Dilan shook his head lightly, rattling the woven strands of his hair. “But you have spirit, and that counts for something. Without it, strength alone is useless.”

“I’ll work hard. I promise.” Ven paused, then remembered himself and added, “Sir.”

“You will, will you?” For the first time, amusement showed through Dilan's demeanor, and he smiled, if wryly. “All right, then. I suppose there’s no harm in the attempt. And  _ sir  _ makes a good start.”

He dismissed all but two of his lances, holding one in each hand, and nodded to Ven’s Keyblade.

“Again,” he said, and raised one lance to the ready.


	5. Chapter 5

Ven felt oddly conflicted about his new routine. On the one hand, he hoped every morning upon waking that today would be the day Aqua would return to Radiant Garden to retrieve him and her two students, letting them all join the fray. On the other hand, he couldn’t help but worry that when Aqua did come back, she would decide that he hadn’t improved enough, and order him to stay behind instead of taking him with her. He didn’t want to think she’d do something like that again, but the mere possibility drove him to push himself to the utmost during every training session. Even after generous applications of curative magic and long hot baths, he still went to bed sore every night.

In involving the castle residents in their regimen, the three Keyblade wielders had nearly bitten off more than they could chew. Dilan was a tough instructor, even-handed but merciless, and while Ven continued to teach Kairi and Lea anything he could about the Keyblade, Dilan didn’t put much stock into it overall.

“The Keyblade is a powerful weapon,” he told the three of them, “but only if held in a steady hand. All its tricks won’t help you survive if you don’t have any strength or stamina. You must be a warrior first, and a wielder of the Keyblade second.”

In keeping with this philosophy, he constantly ran them through different exercises that didn’t always involve direct combat, but always tested their physical mettle and ability to think on their feet. He also set their early-morning start time in stone on the first day by declaring that the last person to arrive each morning would run punishment laps around the courtyard.

“Seriously?” Lea balked, after arriving last and being told the consequences. “Come on, what good is that gonna do me? Let’s just get started already. I’m not gonna be running away from Xehanort, am I?”

“I wouldn’t trouble myself to guess,” said Dilan. “But I had been under the impression that for once in your life, you were determined to take something seriously. You were late—so run.”

“Screw that. What are you now, a gym teacher?”

“I’ll do it, sir,” said Ven staunchly. “I need to run more. I’m still not as fast as I used to be.”

“Very well.” Dilan nodded to him. “Ventus, show the fire-starting malingerer what discipline looks like.”

“Oh, come on,” Lea groaned, as Ven broke into a jog. “Seriously, Ven? You’re gonna throw me under the bus like that?”

He looked over at Kairi.

“Back me up here, princess. This is BS, right?”

Kairi, who had been stretching her legs, made a playful face at him and took off.

“Move your butt, weenie!” she called over her shoulder. “We’ve gotta toughen up!”

Lea shook his head.

“What’s up with you?” he asked Dilan. “You weren’t like this in the Organization.”

“Of course not. We were each responsible for our own success, so I was hardly interested in how you handled yourself. If I recall correctly, you spent most of your free time sleeping.”

“Yeah, well, I  _ like _ sleeping,” said Lea, “and I think I did pretty darn good for myself anyway. Lasted longer than you did, didn’t I?”

“Miracles do happen on occasion,” Dilan said, crossing his arms. “But I wouldn’t rely on them. Though, if you’re content to be outclassed by a pair of children, I suppose there’s nothing to be done. We’ll begin once the other two have warmed up.”

Lea considered his options, then sighed and started jogging after Ven and Kairi.

On the second day of their new regimen, Ama showed up, having stopped by the castle to say hello and been unable to find anyone until she followed the sounds of combat around to the back.

“What’s all of this about?” she asked Ienzo on the balcony. Ienzo stirred his morning coffee.

“Training. Our resident Keyblade wielders asked for some assistance with their education, so we’ve obliged.”

“I see! Well, that’s very nice of you all. I’m sure they appreciate it.”

Below, Lea ran past the balcony at full speed, swearing loudly as he was chased by a row of enormous icicles bursting from the ground in his wake.

Ama began coming to watch them every day, provided that she wasn’t otherwise occupied with committee work. The three trainees didn’t mind, since her presence guaranteed they would have a good lunch to look forward to during their midday break, plus fresh ice cream brought up from Scrooge’s store. After lunch the three always went up to one of the mid-level castle battlements, sharing their bars of sea salt ice cream and talking as they sat looking out over the town. 

Since the three of them had no history together, during these breaks they mostly told one another stories from the past, and Ven was glad to be able to share with others the many good memories he had of life with Terra and Aqua, instead of dwelling on the present situation. In turn, Lea and Kairi’s reminisces and funny stories gradually made Ven feel like Roxas, Sora, and Riku weren’t just faceless names that existed out there somewhere, but real people—maybe even potential friends—that he simply hadn’t met yet.

“You’ll meet Sora and Riku eventually,” Kairi assured him. “And meeting Sora kind of counts as meeting Roxas, too.”

Ventus still wasn’t quite sure what to think of the whole looking-exactly-like-Roxas business, but he did get an apology from Lea about the frustrated outburst he’d made previously. Lea didn’t seem to have much practice with giving apologies, as he hemmed and hawed so much that it took Ven a while to figure out what he was trying to say.

“I know you’re not Roxas,” Lea told him over ice cream. “Really, I get it. It’s just...weird to look at you sometimes, you know? Like...I dunno. Maybe if you got a haircut or something…”

Ven reached up and brushed at the top of his spiky blond hair. Kairi leaned over.

“If he calls you Roxas again,” she said, reaching around Ven to poke Lea’s shoulder, “just start calling him  _ Axel _ . That always throws him off.”

They trained so intently that each day felt like it lasted twice as long as normal. In the Land of Departure, Keyblade practice had always been for only a few hours each day, interspersed with lessons about history, magic, light and darkness, and other subjects a master would be expected to know. Here it was just combat and nothing else. Ven appreciated having the opportunity to get back on his feet in a controlled environment, but that didn’t make the workload any easier.

“Again,” said Dilan, over and over, and each time Ven took the knockback without a word of complaint. He had to get stronger—stronger than he’d ever been before. He couldn’t afford to be the weak, inexperienced kid who had so naively followed Terra away from the Land of Departure after just one taunt from Vanitas.

Despite the many difficulties, Ven could feel himself improving with every lesson, getting closer and closer to the benchmark of how he’d been before he fell asleep. Every day, he could do more than he’d been able to the day before, and he always put maximum effort into the one-on-one magic lessons that Dilan gave him in the early evenings, no matter how battered he was by then from all the group work. During their third lesson, he was so worn out near the end that he briefly passed out.

“That will do for today,” Dilan said, once he’d revived Ven. He didn’t offer a hand to help him up, but when Ven stumbled, he caught the collar of his jacket to steady him. “We’ll resume that technique tomorrow.”

“I’m definitely starting to get it,” said Ven wearily. “I just need more practice.”

“You’re a quicker study than I had supposed,” Dilan admitted, turning away.

As this was on the verge of being a compliment, and Dilan wasn’t really the sort of teacher to offer praise, the exhausted Ven took it as a heartening sign that his hard work was paying off.

* * *

Exactly one week after Aqua’s departure, Ven spent all day glancing hopefully up at the sky, expecting to see her glider emerge from a rift in midair any minute. But she never showed, and that night over dinner, Ven unconsciously kept reaching up to touch the ring hidden under his shirt, wondering whether he could somehow use it to call her here, or at least learn if she was okay.

“What if something happened to her?” he wondered. “Maybe something went wrong, and she needs help...”

Lea snorted over his baked potato.

“Trust me, Ven—the master can take care of herself. All those years that you were asleep, you know what she was doing? Fighting. That’s it.” He pointed with his fork. “Seriously, she’s one tough customer. I thought Sora and Riku were both something, but Master Aqua makes those two look like rookies. And besides—even if she did get in trouble somehow, the others are out there to help her.”

“She said it would be at least a week, right?” Kairi reminded Ven. “I don’t think you should worry unless it takes a lot longer. She might have had to change her plans and not have time to come tell us.”

“I just don’t want her to leave me behind again,” Ven sighed. Kairi passed him a bowl of peas.

“I know how you feel, Ven. Riku and Sora have left me behind a lot too. But that won’t happen this time. The others need us, don’t they? Without seven guardians of light, we can’t stop all the Xehanorts. There’s the master, and Sora and Riku, and King Mickey—and then the three of us make seven.”

Ven knew they were both right, but it was hard not to worry nonetheless.

Two days later, Dilan made them get up extra early in order to give them a practical exam of sorts. Even though it was spring, the predawn air still had enough of a chill to bother them on the long march down into the silent, sleeping town and then further on, past the relatively safe borders of the settlement and into the deep ravine that ringed the area around the castle. Though the ravine was no longer swarming with thousands and thousands of Heartless, there were still enough here at all times to make it generally unsafe. Dilan stopped them at the bottom of the slope that had led down to the ravine floor.

“Your task will be to eliminate as many Heartless as you can in an hour,” he told them. “Assist each other if need be. You must learn to work together if the enemy is too powerful or too numerous.”

“Isn’t this a little much, coach?” Lea complained. (He had called Dilan ‘coach’ a few times early on as a joke, but Kairi and Ven had picked up the habit without including the required sarcasm, so somehow the title had stuck.) “We could’ve at least grabbed some breakfast first. I’m starving.”

“Complain after you’ve finished. Your time begins now.”

“But the sun’s not even up yet.”

“All the better. The Heartless spawn more often in shadow. Now begin.”

He used the wind to leap up twenty feet up onto one of the enormous crystals jutting out of the high wall of the ravine. Above him, only the faintest blush of pink had begun to creep into the eastern sky.

Lea summoned his Keyblade and slung it over one shoulder, the burst of flames as it appeared in his hand casting their three shadows onto the wall of the ravine.

“Well, you heard the guy,” he told Kairi and Ven. “Let’s knock ‘em dead. Heartless...Blegh. I thought I was done messing with those stupid things.”

Ventus and Kairi, however, didn’t have Lea’s many years of experience with the Heartless, so for them this challenge was much more exciting. Ven had only seen Heartless a couple of times in his life, when Eraqus had brought them in to give his students some context for the illustrations in the ancient writings that they studied. But Ven certainly had never been allowed to fight them, and he discovered that there were many more varieties around now than the simple, skittering Shadows he had been shown. They reminded him more than a little of the Unversed.

The initial lack of sunlight didn’t pose a problem. Between Kairi’s light and Lea’s fire, there was plenty to see by, and as Heartless were slowly drawn to their location, the ravine filled with splashes of light and whorls of flame that cast shuddering shadows all over the high stone walls, bursts of magic reflecting through the ravine’s giant crystals like a wild strobe light. The unpredictable and strange-looking Heartless made Ven and Kairi nervous, but Lea didn’t seem to mind them. Not even half a dozen Lance Soldiers spawning close by could make him do anything but yawn.

“These guys don’t scare me,” he told Ven and Kairi, who had both raised their blades quickly. “I’ve destroyed so many Heartless, I could mow ‘em down in my sleep. This whole thing’ll be easy-peasy, you’ll see.”

The Heartless didn’t act with much intelligence, and seemed drawn to their three Keyblades on instinct like moths to a flame. Ven managed to catch a whole cluster of Shadows in the winds that he cast around him, and threw his Keyblade in such a way that it caught in the wind and spun around and around him, knocking back anything that tried to draw too close. Kairi started off with some of the moves that Ven had shown her, but she took a new tack after she realized that the Heartless took much more damage from her light-infused attacks than anything else. She launched a fist-sized ball of light from her hand directly into an approaching Soldier, annihilating it in one hit without needing to use the Keyblade at all.

“Not bad, princess,” Lea said. “But I bet that was a lucky shot.”

“You think? Then check this out!”

With some difficulty, and after two separate attempts, Kairi transformed her Keyblade into a flower-studded recurve bow. The next ball of light she conjured was caught in both hands and stretched out like taffy, until it became a line rather than a ball, and when she let the makeshift light-arrow fly from her bow, it pierced straight through an oncoming Armored Knight and hit a second one directly behind it. Both of them burst into tendrils of darkness and disappeared.

“Nice going, Kairi!” Ven called, as he ran past her in pursuit of a lone Shadow.

As the sun rose, the three began to tire. The Heartless weren’t overwhelming, but they appeared in waves that sometimes left no downtime in between, and unlike a conventional opponent, they didn’t ever learn their lesson and back off. More kept coming, and soon Lea and Kairi and Ven stopped bantering and calling out their tallies as the swarming Heartless forced them to fight back-to-back, squeezing them into a narrow part of the ravine. 

The closed quarters made it easier to hit their targets, but it also let the Heartless lunge in closer than any of them were comfortable with. Kairi took several knocks and scrapes (though a point-blank application of pure light destroyed the culprits right afterwards), and Ven soon found he couldn’t practice many of his wind moves in such a confined area. He tried blowing all the Heartless away from them with a powerful outward gust, but it wasn’t strong enough to knock anything but the small Shadows off their feet. The larger creatures skidded backwards a little ways, but stayed on their feet and pushed forward.

“I thought you said this was gonna be easy!” Ven said to Lea, panting.

“This  _ is  _ easy.” Lea smashed an Armored Knight aside with the back side of his Keyblade. “You think this is bad? Try fighting a big Heartless sometime.”

“Like that one?”

The earth lurched with the force of the massive Morning Star’s landing. It was so heavy that its spiked armor punched a divot into the hard rock from the force of its impact, and it struggled to crawl out of the dent in the earth towards them, its beady yellow eyes glowing from inside its tiny, ink-black head. It lumbered towards Lea, the closest and largest target, and Lea shot fireballs at it with one hand while whacking away at an encircling group of Soldiers with his Keyblade.

“A little help over here, you two!” Lea called over his shoulder, but Ven and Kairi were too busy fighting back-to-back inside a ring of encroaching Heartless. Lea’s momentary distraction let the Morning Star smash a club-like arm down on him, and though he held up his Keyblade to block the brunt of it, the blow still knocked him over, pinning him to the ground.

“Lea!” Ven cried.

Lea struggled beneath the Morning Star, trying to scramble away, his Keyblade pinned down by the monster’s weight. Its other club-arm raised above him, ready to come down on his head.

“Lea, it’s gonna hit you!”

Lea swore loudly, and his Keyblade disappeared. Twin chakrams erupted into existence in his grasp instead, and he burst into flame all over, cloaking himself in fire and using the sudden force of it to knock the Heartless’s heavy arm off of him.

“That’s it—no more mister nice guy!” Scrambling to his feet, Lea twirled one chakram over his head. “You wanna play rough? Come and get it!”

Lea charged headlong at the disoriented Morning Star, his chakrams burning so hotly that they sent up smoke.

His whole aspect changed with the switch back to his old weapons. Instead of clumsily hitting with the Keyblade and staying in close for melee attacks, he leapt everywhere at once, throwing burning chakrams that sliced through the smaller Heartless like hot knives through butter. Flames erupted all around him, and he darted in and out of them nimbly, using walls and pillars of fire to herd the Heartless together before the blazing buzzsaws of his chakrams ripped them apart, or the sheer intensity of the flames he conjured melted them away. The Morning Star vanished after the ground beneath it turned hot enough to scorch its spiked shell, but Lea kept going, targeting all the other Heartless that had spawned around them. Ven and Kairi stopped fighting altogether and simply stood watching, amazed.

“Show-off,” Kairi said, as Lea finished off the last straggling Heartless with a particularly flashy toss of a chakram, catching it in one hand when it came back to him. But she sounded impressed rather than jealous, and when another wave of Heartless failed to appear after half a minute, the three started patching themselves up.

“How are we doing on time?” Lea asked, checking his wrist reflexively despite not having a watch.

“I think it’s almost up,” said Kairi. “We should head back to the path. Let’s make sure nothing’s following us, though...”

At the entrance to the ravine, they found Dilan waiting for them, though they supposed he had been watching the entire time from some hidden vantage point up along the cliffs, tracking their progress as they fought their way along the valley.

“Did pretty good, coach!” Lea reported. “Kinda stopped counting, but I know we got at least a hundred of ‘em.”

“A hundred and thirty-eight,” Dilan said, “though I expected at least two hundred out of the three of you. You could have done better.”

“Come on, don’t be a party pooper.” Lea slapped Kairi on the back, hard enough to make her jolt. “Everybody did good. Princess here even popped off a few with her heart powers. That deserves a nice hot breakfast, don’t you think?”

“You’ll not eat until I’m through with you.”

But Lea’s complaint was soon resolved when Ama turned up at the entrance to the ravine with a picnic basket—against Dilan’s prior orders, judging by how annoyed her arrival made him, though she successfully bullied him into letting his charges eat.

“You can’t starve them, Dilan, that’s not going to help,” she chided, as Ven, Kairi, and Lea sat on shards of giant crystals, downing water and chopped egg sandwiches. “Besides, some of them need to put on some muscle.”

She gave the gangly Lea a sidelong look as he wolfed down a sandwich.

“They ought to learn to fight on an empty stomach now and then,” Dilan said. “A full belly’s no guarantee before battle.”

“It is if they’re anywhere near me. And that goes for you, too.”

She pressed onto him a thermos of coffee and a couple of extra-large sandwiches tied up in a colorful handkerchief, which he consumed with partly feigned reluctance. Ama only left when they promised they’d drop off the picnic basket at her house on their way back to the castle later.

Once they’d taken the edge off of their hunger, Ven, Kairi, and Lea were in more of a mood to analyze how their first taste of action had gone. Even Kairi admitted sincerely how impressed she was with Lea’s performance against the final wave of Heartless, and Ven agreed.

“That was really amazing, Lea,” Ven said. “I didn’t know you could fight like that.”

“That? Psh, that was nothing,” Lea said through a huge bite of sandwich. He swallowed and hit his fist with his chest to force it down. “You shoulda seen me back in the Organization. I knocked out Heartless all day like nobody’s business. Well, I mean...I guess it  _ was _ Nobody’s business…”

“But then…Why do you even have the Keyblade?” Ven asked him. “You fight really well with those spinning things. But with the Keyblade, you’re...um…”

“Totally hopeless?” Kairi prompted, smiling.

“You’re just...not as good,” Ven said, trying not to be unkind. “I thought you were training with us so you could fight, but—it seems like you already know how. So why do all this extra work just to wield a Keyblade?”

Lea had been about to chug some water, but paused, holding the jug at a tilt.

“Why? Well...Come on. Who  _ wouldn’t _ want a Keyblade? All the cool kids have one.” He smiled oddly; Ven wondered if he was thinking of Roxas. “Keyblades are real special...they can do all kinds of fancy stuff. After seeing them in action, well, I just had to upgrade. Got it memorized?”

“I guess,” said Ven. Lea finished drinking water, wiping his mouth on his sleeve.

“It’s not an upgrade if you suck at it,” Kairi pointed out. Lea screwed the top back onto the jug.

“Hey, you gotta suck before you can get any good,” he said sagely. “I used to suck with chakrams, too, when I was your age. But practice makes perfect.”

Dilan, however, was much less impressed with Lea’s finishing display than Ven or Kairi had been. 

“What in blazes was the point of that fireworks show? You’re meant to be training with a new weapon, not flaunting the old.”

“What did you want me to do, coach? Get my head squashed?”

“I wouldn’t have let you perish,” Dilan grunted, in a tone that seemed to indicate he’d omitted the word  _ probably.  _ “In any case, our work here isn’t done. We’ll be practicing on the Heartless for the rest of today.”

“At least we got breakfast,” Lea sighed, folding his arms behind his neck.

* * *

The morning after the day spent in the ravine, Ven was so sore he had to cast Cure on himself before he could even drag himself down to breakfast.

“Maybe he’ll go easier on us today,” he said hopefully, once he reached the kitchen. Lea blearily poured himself coffee.

“Yeah, right. If you wanted somebody who’d go easy on you, you picked the wrong guy big-time.”

As the three ate, they were briefly interrupted by someone else shuffling into the kitchen—an older man with hints of gray touching the edges of his trim hair and goatee. Ven hadn’t realized there was such a person at the castle and so watched him with mild interest, while Kairi froze with a spoonful of oatmeal halfway to her mouth. Lea only gave the newcomer a glance.

“Hey there, gramps. Morning. You, uh...want some coffee or anything? Made it fresh.”

He offered the coffee, but the man declined in favor of tea, and after nodding politely at Kairi and Ven and asking their names, he left the kitchen and wandered away up the hall. Kairi remained staring at the doorway with a fixed expression, as if she didn’t know what to make of the mysterious intruder.

“Do you know that guy, Kairi?” Ven asked her. “You look surprised.”

“No. I’ve only...heard of him. But, I didn’t know he was here...That’s Ansem the Wise, right? The real Ansem.”

“What’s left of him.” Lea spread butter onto a piece of sliced toast. “Old guy lost his memory in the Realm of Darkness. Doesn’t know anything about anything anymore. Kinda sad, but...hey, what can you do?”

He dunked a strip of the buttered toast into his second cup of coffee.

“Come on, you two, it’s getting light. Let’s hit the field before coach decides we all need to run double laps.”

They didn’t get double laps, but they weren’t allowed to skip their regular warmup, either. After they’d finished, Ven and Kairi both bent double, gasping and holding their sides, while Lea simply fell over.

“This is bullshit,” Lea wheezed, lying facedown on the ruined stonework as if trying to make a snow angel. “I’m done. I’m taking a break today. This is bullshit…”

It took Kairi and Ven each grabbing one of his arms and trying to drag him across the flagstones to make him get up again.

Dilan didn’t give them as many physically demanding drills today, but they were so taxing in other ways that it hardly felt like much of a respite. He and Aeleus and Even paired off with them to work on their weak points that he’d observed in the ravine, and as the morning wore on, the courtyard filled with all the usual cries, thuds, and bursts of magic. 

Ienzo stepped in to assist once in awhile, but spent most of the time watching from the balcony, skimming through a crumbling old spellbook that smelled faintly of mold. Ama joined him when she arrived.

“They’re certainly working very hard with those Keyblades, aren’t they?” she said, putting a teabag into her mug as Kairi shot a beam of light from her Keyblade at a moving block of ice. “But I suppose they have to.”

“You must find it interesting to see how the Keyblade functions,” Ienzo remarked, leafing through his book.

“Of course. But really, all of it is interesting, not just the Keyblade. We don’t do magic or anything like that back home. It’s all rather exciting.”

She leaned over the balcony slightly to get a better look at the pair sparring below.

“And after all, the view isn’t anything to complain about, either…”

Ienzo followed her line of sight and frowned; Aeleus was rolling up his sleeves, his sweaty shirt sticking to his abs as he heaved his giant axe-sword onto his shoulder. Ama noticed Ienzo’s disapproving look and laughed.

“Oh, don’t be selfish.” She fished the soggy teabag out of her mug, smiling wryly. “I know that one’s yours, but you can’t get mad at the rest of us just for looking.”

She happily moved her attention to Ven and Dilan across the courtyard as Ienzo closed his book, mildly unsettled by the revelation that half her reason for turning up these past few days was just to watch buff men get sweaty. Then again, this was the same woman who’d wanted to hang the giant portrait of Terra-Xehanort up in her room before she found out who he was.

“Don’t give me that look,” she said, chuckling at Ienzo’s miffed expression. “Really, Ienzo, I’m not going to try and steal him. Who could? You two make such a good pair. And you’re much cuter than I am, anyway.”

She nudged him with her elbow, sloshing her tea, but he didn’t respond except by looking as if it was much, much too early in the morning to have Sora’s mother tease about his personal life. He coughed pointedly and smoothed down his cravat.

“I’d prefer not to discuss it, if it’s all the same to you,” he said.

“Of course. I was only trying to joke.” She took another, more thoughtful sip of tea, then added, “But I don’t suppose you could tell him to take his shirt off?”

This time Ienzo couldn’t stop himself from looking downright alarmed, though he forced himself to regain composure. Ama laughed gently, without any ill will.

“I’m sorry,” she told him. “I didn’t think it would bother you so much. I won’t joke about it again.”

“That would be appreciated,” said Ienzo stiffly. “Though if you have a certain...type...I suppose you’re free to ogle Dilan.”

“Oh...Well, I mean, you know…” Ama sipped her tea with a sudden gleam in her eye, watching Ven dodge away from one of Dilan’s blasts of wind. “Dilan’s certainly very handsome. I’ve told him that before. But I don’t suppose he’s really…I mean, after all, he’s a bit stubborn about some things...”

She trailed off, smiling, and her eyes lit up brighter as she watched him continue fighting.

Below them, Lea and Aeleus were still sparring too. Lea threw up a sphere of shielding flames all around himself, but Aeleus’s blow broke through it, slamming Skysplitter into him. He soared into the air and bounced when he came down, crashing into the stone of the courtyard in a heap.

“Oh my.” Ama leaned over the railing. “That was—oh goodness. You don’t think Lea’s hurt, do you?”

“One can only hope,” said Ienzo, and flipped open his book to where he’d left off.


	6. Chapter 6

Kairi fell face-down across the bed in her pajamas, sore all over even after her long soak in the tub. She lay without moving for nearly a minute before rolling over to stare at the ceiling, the towel wrapped around her wet hair slipping off and falling off the bed onto the stone floor.

After another grueling day and a hot bath and dinner, all she wanted to do was sleep like a rock, but guilt prodded her even as exhaustion threatened to pull her into unconsciousness while she lay sprawled across the sheets. She’d used that same excuse of being too tired for days in a row, and now it had been almost a week. It wasn’t fair, especially not when the whole process had gotten so much easier lately.

Sighing, Kairi forced herself to sit up on the edge of the bed, then ran fingers through her damp hair and closed her eyes.

She let the sleepiness help her wipe her mind clean. It was easier to do this when she was focused on nothing, thinking about nothing—just sitting quietly and listening inward. She held the side of the bed with one hand and reached up to press the other lightly against her chest, over her heart.

“Okay, I’m here,” she whispered to the empty room. “I’m ready now.”

No voice answered her, not even anything carried on the night wind through the open window, but as it often did when she tried this, the memory of Yen Sid’s admonishment echoed in her mind on cue.

_ “Kairi...I am afraid this is a grave error. I realize why you are concerned, but you must understand that your heart is more valuable than most. As one of the seven hearts of pure light, you would be of great interest to Xehanort even if you had not taken up the Keyblade.” _

A faint glow appeared over Kairi’s heart, shining through her fingers as if she’d caught a fistful of fireflies and were holding it close to her chest.

_ “What you have asked of me and your master is perhaps possible, but it could also prove dangerous—and you, of all people, must not do anything that would place your heart in jeopardy. Put these unfortunate circumstances out of your mind, and accept what must be. We must all concentrate on the crisis that lies before us.” _

The glow in Kairi’s heart spread over her like flowing water, light pouring across and through and out of herself until she lit up the whole bedroom, haloed in radiance from within.

_ “Your master will agree with me, Kairi. No more of these attempts to undo the past. Focus instead on your command of the Keyblade, and what we must do to preserve the future.” _

Kairi stood up, and the light did not follow her. Instead a ghost was left sitting on the bed in the exact position Kairi had just vacated, glowing faintly at the edges, translucent.

Once she had been the mirror image of Kairi, but Kairi had changed enough over the past couple of months that now, they might have only been sisters rather than twins. Kairi’s hair had grown out faster, and the ghost had neither Kairi’s slight athleticism nor the freckles that bloomed along her more tanned face and shoulders. The ghost-girl still looked exactly as she had at their first meeting: pale, blonde, a simple white dress.

“Hey, Naminé. How’s it going?”

Naminé held out her hands, turning them over as they stopped glowing and turned opaque. Soon she was no longer a transparent projection made of light but fully corporeal and solid, solid enough to feel the softness of the sheets she was sitting on and smell the night air coming through the open window.

Kairi flopped down to sit next to her on the bed, grinning.

“Sorry it’s been a few days,” Kairi said. She reached onto the nearby nightstand for a comb, tiredly beginning to work it through her damp hair. “I’ve been passing out every night as soon as I get in bed. Practice takes a lot out of me.”

“It’s okay.” Naminé’s voice was as similar to Kairi’s as her face, but not quite identical, if only in tone. She was more subdued than Kairi, her words tinged with something like melancholy. “You’re training hard. I can tell.”

“Well, the good news is, I’ve got a bunch more stuff for you. Check it out—”

Kairi put the comb between her teeth so that she could wrest open the top drawer of the rickety nightstand, which always got stuck halfway through and needed to be pulled with both hands. She took the comb out of her mouth and rummaged through the open drawer one-handed, digging around. The drawer’s contents looked like a secret treasure hoard, with clothes and trinkets and wrapped bits of food all jumbled up inside, perhaps once arranged neatly but now overflowing and chaotic.

“I saved you some snacks...Okay, here, Sora’s mom made these coconut bars.” Kairi set them on the bed, on a plate she’d borrowed from the kitchens. “And these are from yesterday, but they should still be good. I forgot what they’re called, but they taste like donut holes. And, I bought you these…” she passed Naminé a tiny brown paper bag, “because I thought they would look good on you. But I don’t know if they’re your style. Try them on and see.”

Naminé opened the bag, revealing a pair of red stud earrings that she rolled in the hollow of her palm.

“That was sweet of you, Kairi. But,” Naminé smiled softly, “my ears aren’t pierced...”

“Really? But mine are, so I thought yours had to...Oh, hang on.” Kairi knocked the heel of her hand against her forehead. “I got them pierced for that party last year. So that wasn’t until after you were…born?” She frowned, puzzled. “Is that the right word? It doesn’t sound right. You’re not a baby.”

Naminé’s soft smile faded as she gave the earrings back to Kairi, who tossed the bag carelessly back into the drawer.

“I should have thought of that,” Kairi admitted, reaching for one of the fried dough balls in a bowl between them, the bowl wobbling as she shifted to sit cross-legged on the bed. “It’s okay, though. I’ll pick you up something else. Do you like bracelets? They had some pretty cute ones at the item shop.”

“You don’t have to buy things for me, Kairi. After all, I don’t really...need anything...”

“But I want to. It’s my fault you can’t go shopping, right?” Kairi ate the dough ball. “Just because you’re with me doesn’t mean you shouldn’t have stuff of your own. Don’t be so hard on yourself.”

She found the comb she’d abandoned on the nightstand and resumed brushing her damp hair.

“I appreciate it, Kairi,” Naminé told her. “I really do. But, I don’t want you to think that you have to...do nice things for me, just because I’m...here.”

“Hey, doing nice things is what friends are for. And we’re friends now, right?”

Kairi smiled, and Naminé nodded and smiled back, though as always her expression was softer and more reserved than Kairi’s.

“Yes. We’re...friends.”

Kairi reached up with her comb-free hand, waiting for a high-five. Naminé hesitated, then lightly hit Kairi’s palm with her own, making Kairi laugh.

“You’re getting the hang of it,” Kairi said. “And you’re definitely getting stronger, too. Every time we do this, you get more...real, and stay longer. Remember the first time? I could barely see your outline. Now look at you.”

“I’m not sure if that’s a good thing, though,” Naminé admitted, pressing her thumbs together. “If your masters find out that you’re still doing this for me...”

“They won’t find out.” Kairi picked up the plate of coconut bars, inspecting them at eye level. “We just have to be careful, right? As long as nobody figures it out, it’ll be fine. And I haven’t told anyone else about you—not even Lea or Ven.”

“I just don’t want you to get into trouble again because of me. I’m not supposed to exist to begin with, so...”

“Don’t say stuff like that, Naminé.”

Kairi couldn’t decide on a coconut bar, and swapped out the plate of them for the bowl of fried dough balls, swirling them around before selecting one that hadn’t had most of the sugar knocked off of it.

“You know what I think?” She popped the dough ball into her mouth. “I think that not even Master Yen Sid knows what would happen if you left me again. That’s why he got so wigged out when I asked him how to help you. My heart is really special, and you’re really special, and Sora’s kind of tied in to it, and…I don’t know. I bet that in all the history of people having Keyblades, nothing like this has ever happened before. It’s all this...big mystery. So he doesn’t want me to do anything weird with my heart.”

She offered Naminé the bowl. Naminé refused it gently, but Kairi knew her well enough by now to insist, and Naminé ended up eating one of the donut holes in several small, delicate bites.

“He’s right, Kairi,” she sighed. “Without me, you’re not complete.”

“Why, though?” Kairi wondered. “That whole time you weren’t with me, I never noticed anything wrong. I didn’t feel different, or like I was missing something. Except for Sora...I knew that I forgot someone really important. But it didn’t feel like a piece of  _ me  _ was gone because of you.”

They looked at each other. Naminé tugged at her blonde hair, unconsciously twining the end around her finger. Her worried expression made Kairi offer her the bowl of donut balls.

“Come on, Naminé,” she insisted, as Naminé selected another one. “You can’t just...be stuck with me for the rest of my life, and never get to go anywhere or do anything or...or own anything of your own. That’s no way to live. Right?”

Naminé sighed, smiling.

They shared the stash of snacks for a while, chatting idly. As always, Kairi wanted to let Naminé enjoy the simple pleasure of being out in the world, and didn’t press her on any uncomfortable topics, only asking the occasional question as Naminé ran her hands over the sheets and explored the familiar bedroom, stationing herself at the open window to revel in the scent of flowers and the glitter of the stars far above. Kairi finished methodically combing all the tangles out of her hair and then picked over the rest of the coconut bars, whittling them down to only a handful.

“So...Is your training still going well?” Naminé asked her, after she’d closed the window and sat back down on the bed. “How are the others doing? Ventus, and Axel...I mean, Lea.”

“Coach is pretty intense,” Kairi said, “but he knows his stuff. And Ven’s teaching me a lot, too. I know I’m nowhere near as good as Sora and Riku yet, but I think I could hold my own now if we all fought together. The two of them wouldn’t have to just protect me.”

She picked up another coconut bar.

“Ven’s gotten a lot stronger,” she added, licking sugar off the side of her thumb. “You’d never guess that he couldn’t even walk when he first woke up. He’s really pushing himself...I think he wants to make sure Master Aqua won’t have any reason to worry about him. And Lea...”

She handed Naminé the plate of coconut bars, which now only had two left.

“He’s still being kind of weird about Ven. He hasn’t called him ‘Roxas’ in a few days, but I can tell it’s still strange for him. I guess I can’t blame him, though...If I met someone who looked just like Sora or Riku, that would throw me off too.”

She ate the last bite of her coconut bar, munching thoughtfully, and then her eyes lit up as she remembered something.

“Hey, Naminé—how do you think Sora and Roxas are doing lately? Can you tell?”

Naminé hesitated, then picked up the smallest remaining coconut bar for herself, setting the plate down on the bed between them.

“I don’t know how they are. I wish I did.”

“Can’t you like…” Kairi didn’t seem to know how to describe what she wanted to say, and instead wriggled her fingers. “See inside Sora’s heart still? Through his memories?”

“Not...really,” Naminé admitted. She bit her lip, staring at the coconut bar she had selected. “At least...not like I used to. The longer I spend with you, the less of a connection I feel to Sora’s memories. I think...that’s how it’s meant to be.” She smiled thinly. “I’m not really me, Kairi. I’m just a special part of you, who was created because of your connection to Sora. Now that you’re whole, I think...someday, I’ll lose all my powers, and fade into you completely.”

“No way.” Kairi shook her head, pulling her damp hair back from her face as if to make a ponytail, though she realized she had nothing to fasten it with. It fell away when she let it go. “You definitely aren’t just a part of me, Naminé. How can you still think that? You’ve done tons of things that I’ve never done, and you’re really talented, and brave, and cool…”

Naminé blushed as she finished the coconut bar, color tinging her pale cheeks.

“I don’t think that’s true, Kairi. I’m not...I mean, no one has ever called me ‘cool’ before...”

“You’re way cool.” Kairi nudged her, smiling, a cheerful big sister comforting a younger sibling. “You’re a really good artist, and you have magic powers, and you helped Sora and Riku and me, even though you didn’t have to. If it wasn’t for you, I would never have gotten those guys back. You even busted me out of prison. If that’s not cool, I don’t know what is.”

“But that’s not right.” Naminé sighed, pressing her fingertips together in her lap. “The only reason Sora’s memory was damaged in the first place was because I took it apart. Everything that I fixed was all my fault to begin with.”

“Yeah, but the Organization forced you to do it. Weren’t you like, kidnapped?”

“I still did what they wanted.”

“It doesn’t count if you’re kidnapped,” Kairi insisted. “I told you, you can’t think like that. It’s not fair.”

“It wasn’t only that.” Naminé looked away, down at the worn stone floor. “You still don’t understand, Kairi. I chose to do it. I wanted...I  _ wanted _ to replace you, at first. Sora seemed so kind, and when I was born, I was so alone, and scared. I wanted someone like him to be my friend, and...and come save me...”

“Because you were kidnapped!” Kairi said, exasperated. She gave Naminé a friendly nudge with her shoulder, the same as she would have done to Sora or Riku, though as Naminé was much slighter than them (and Kairi was stronger than she was used to being), the gesture almost tipped Naminé over. “What if the Organization hadn’t ever found you? You only did all that stuff to Sora’s memory because you were stuck with them. You never really had a choice.”

“I did have a choice. I could have chosen not to hurt other people. And instead, I...I was selfish. You and Sora and everyone else paid the price for that.”

Naminé picked at the hem of her plain white dress. 

“Ever since then...I’ve been trying to fix my mistakes. If I can’t truly exist, then I want...I want to at least do the right thing, before I disappear for good. If that’s all I can manage, then maybe...it’s enough.”

Naminé kept gazing at the floor, but Kairi didn’t look moved by her confession. She had heard it before.

“I swear, Naminé, you’re as bad as Riku sometimes.” Kairi fell backwards onto the bed, her drying hair fanning out over the sheets as she talked to the ceiling. “You both act like you’re the wooorst people in the whooole world just because you screwed up once.”

“It wasn’t just ‘screwing up.’ It was...wrong. I never should have manipulated Sora’s memories. And, it wasn’t only Sora that I hurt. Because of everything that I did...”

“You’re not a bad person, Naminé.” Kairi raised her head. “And you’re not going to just disappear, either. We’ll figure something out. Don’t you think it’s worth it?”

Naminé didn’t answer.

“I’m serious, Naminé. If you weren’t connected to me, if we didn’t have to worry about any of this heart stuff—you would want to exist, right? And hang out with me and Sora and everyone?”

“Of course I would, Kairi.” Naminé smiled, less sadly this time. “Watching all of you in Sora’s memories, I always thought...that must be the most wonderful thing. To have friends who want you around…”

“Well, I want that for you too. It’s really weird making a friend that you have to keep secret. I want to hang out with you like normal, and do all the stuff that I do with Sora and Riku and all my other friends. We could go to the beach, and go shopping, and play volleyball...” She trailed off, frowning at the ceiling. “If we can someday, I mean. If Xehanort doesn’t end up ruining everything.”

The thought sobered her, and she sat upright.

“We’re off to a good start for you, though, aren’t we?” she asked Naminé. “Doing...whatever this is.”

“I think we only can because your heart is special.” Naminé, still sitting on the edge of the bed, had to twist around to look at Kairi behind her. “A heart of pure light...It’s the only reason I can come out like this at all. If there were darkness to get lost in...if you weren’t able to help me with your light...then I don’t think I could manage it.”

“At least it’s something.” Kairi reached out and brushed Naminé’s shoulder, as if testing to see whether her fingertips might pass right through; in the past, they often had. “And it gets better every time. Last time you were solid for like, two hours.”

Kairi scooted forward, picked up the last coconut bar, and split it in half, offering Naminé a piece, which Naminé accepted. At Kairi’s wordless suggestion, they tapped the pieces together in the air, like doing a toast.

“Kairi, I...I’m glad we’re friends.” Naminé tucked her hair behind her ear, the same way Kairi sometimes did now when her hair wasn’t up in a ponytail. “Really. You didn’t have to worry about me, or try to talk to me, but...I’m glad that you decided to.”

“How could I not?” Kairi asked. “What else was I supposed to do? Just take you into my heart for the rest of forever, and never wonder about who you were or anything? Act like you didn’t matter? Like it wasn’t super weird to just—combine with somebody all of a sudden?”

She finished the coconut bar, nibbling at the last piece of toasted coconut that had stuck to her fingernail.

“You could have done that,” Naminé admitted. “After all, I’m supposed to be with you. It’s meant to be that way.”

“Says who? Nothing’s ‘meant’ to be any kind of way, Naminé. You have to decide how you want things to be, and then make it happen. It took me a long time to figure that out.”

Kairi picked up one of the crumpled feather pillows beside her and toyed with it, tossing it back and forth between each hand.

“I always wanted to be with Sora and Riku,” she admitted, “but at first I thought it would be better if I stayed behind. You know? I couldn’t fight or anything, and they needed something to come back to, after everything that happened to us. So I did what Sora asked and just...waited for them. Every day I thought about them, and waited, and waited…”

“You were their guiding light,” Naminé said. “For Sora...and for Riku, too. I saw that, when I first met them.”

“But I don’t want to just be a guiding light,” Kairi insisted. “When I was at home, I never knew if my best friends were okay, or if they were ever coming back, and I kept thinking, what if I never saw them again? What if I could have done something to help them out, but I wasn’t there? I had to just believe in them, and hope they didn’t get hurt. And anyway...Why should I get to stay home and be safe, while they’re both out there risking everything to hold back the darkness?”

She plonked the pillow into her lap, resting her elbows on it.

“I care about those two dorks,” she sighed, “more than anything. So if I’m going to be their ‘guiding light,’ then I don’t want to be like a...like a lighthouse, that’s just sitting out there far away. I want to be a really bright flashlight. You know...something useful that they actually have  _ with _ them.”

Naminé nodded, smiling. Kairi tossed the pillow up into the air and then caught it, squeezing it lightly.

“Lea told me something once, when he was still Axel,” she said. “He said that if you have a dream...something that you want...you can’t just wait. You have to act to make it happen. I’ve been thinking about that a lot, ever since he said it. I think he’s right...and I’m trying really hard to always act that way now.” She considered, then added, “Don’t tell Lea I said that, though.”

Naminé laughed, and Kairi laughed too. As always, Kairi’s laugh was more easy and open, and louder.

“Do you get what I mean, Naminé?” Kairi asked her. “If you want to exist, then we can try and figure something out together. Maybe it’ll be hard, or dangerous, but we won’t know unless we try. And trying’s definitely better than just sitting around waiting. Right?”

Kairi adjusted the spaghetti strap of her pajama tank that had fallen down onto her shoulder, musing, and then perked up.

“Hey, Naminé, I meant to ask you last time—what’s up with that man who showed up at breakfast the other day? Ansem. You saw him too, didn’t you? I definitely thought I felt something...”

Naminé nodded, and her hands in her lap twisted their fingers together.

“Wasn’t he the person you were with when Sora was asleep?” Kairi asked. “That  _ was _ him, right? I only saw him once before, so I wasn’t sure...”

“Yes...that was him. DiZ...I mean, Ansem the Wise. He...We worked together, to restore Sora.”

“He was a huge jerk to you, though, right?”

Naminé looked up, surprised. In all their many conversations, she had never gone into much detail about this.

“Riku told me,” Kairi said, reading her expression. “I asked him and Sora all about you, before they both went off again.”

“I suppose DiZ wasn’t...kind,” Naminé admitted. She pressed the pads of her index fingers together. “He didn’t think very highly of Nobodies. Since we aren’t meant to exist in the first place...”

“If you say that again, I’m gonna hit you with a pillow,” Kairi said, raising the one in her lap to emphasize the threat. “I mean it, Naminé, that’s messed up. Look at Lea—he used to be a Nobody, right? And now he’s just a regular person, but he doesn’t act super different. You can’t say he ‘wasn’t meant to exist’ before. And you definitely can’t say that about yourself, either. Not around me.”

Naminé smiled. It was easy to see why Sora and Riku had Kairi for a close friend—even easier than it had been when all she’d had to go on were Sora’s memories. A heart of pure light didn’t mean that Kairi never felt negative emotions; it meant only that those emotions could never breed darkness, could never spread and poison her and permanently dampen her spirit. She was someone to whom people were naturally drawn, a beacon of warmth that other hearts could fixate on and follow. And the Kairi that Naminé had come to know since joining up with her was even more determined and boistrous than the one she’d first seen in Sora’s memories. The adventures and dangers that had molded Kairi’s best friends into heroes—and left her alone without them—had lit a fire in her heart, driving her off her island and across the worlds in search of them, driving her to study the Keyblade and become someone who could do more for her best friends than just smile and shine in the distance.

“You’re still solid,” Kairi remarked, tapping Naminé’s arm to be sure. “Do you want to sneak downstairs or something? I feel bad that you can’t ever try any hot food. We could make tea and heat something up, if you want? As long as no one sees you…”

“Maybe next time.” Naminé twined the ends of her hair so tightly around her finger that a slight curl stayed in place afterwards.

“For sure next time,” Kairi said. “You’ll never figure out what food you like if you only ever get to eat snacks. Just like you’ll never figure out what clothes you like if you never get to wear anything except that dress. You like trying new things, right?”

“I do, but...I’m not sure it matters. After all...if I just end up disappearing into your heart someday…”

“That’s no excuse,” Kairi said matter-of-factly. “I mean, I’m just gonna turn into dirt someday, but that doesn’t mean there’s no point trying to look cute before then.”

This thought made Kairi wrench the nightstand drawer open once more, and she rifled around, tossing various items onto the bed beside her as if searching for something: cheap jewelry and wrapped sticks of bubblegum, tank tops, a belt, a silk scarf. Naminé couldn’t help but fiddle with these things, running the silk through her fingers and enjoying its softness before folding it and tying it around her neck in the same way she’d done the first time, leaning over to peek at herself in the full-length mirror. Kairi emerged from the chaos of the drawer triumphantly clutching a bottle of pastel nail polish.

“I forgot about this,” she told Naminé. “I threw it in my bag when I first packed, but honestly, I’m not really into painting my nails. That’s more Selphie’s style. Still...it’s fun sometimes.” She offered Naminé the bottle. “Do you want to try it on?”

Naminé accepted the small bottle, then held out one hand and splayed her fingers, as if trying to imagine the final results. Even such a tiny amount of color would certainly be noticeable on her; between her blonde hair, pale skin, and white clothing, she looked like a very faded photocopy of the red-haired, heavily freckled Kairi.

“Are you sure it’s all right?” Naminé asked. “If it’s yours, then I don’t want to use too much of it…”

“It’s fine. Give it a shot. I bet it looks better on you than me anyway—it goes with your skin.”

Hesitantly, Naminé unscrewed the cap, examining the miniature brush curiously before applying a single coat to her pinky. The relative ease of doing so gave her the confidence to continue on to the rest of her hand.

“If you like it, I can buy you more,” Kairi said. “Just tell me what colors you want to try.”

She watched with interest as Naminé finished the rest of her left hand, and impressively, Naminé didn’t get too much of the polish on her actual skin, despite not having even laid her hand flat to the bed. Naminé held the finished hand up to the yellow lamplight, watching how her nails glistened wetly.

“That color  _ does _ look good on you,” Kairi said happily. “I knew it would.”

Naminé’s hesitant smile made Kairi beam at her, and Kairi kept talking as Naminé waited for her nails to dry, telling the whole winding story of how she’d come to acquire that particular bottle of polish on a shopping trip back home.

They had traded many stories since the first of these strange, secret meetings, but Kairi, having existed much longer than Naminé, had many more stories to tell, and Naminé liked hearing them. Naminé’s own history had been coaxed out of her in initially reluctant bits and pieces, for she had convinced herself that Kairi would either be wary of her because of what she had done to Sora, or simply not be interested in the mundanity of a brief couple of years’ non-existence spent being shunted between people who used her as a tool. But to Naminé’s surprise, Kairi had been interested in her, quite keenly, and badgered her until she got the whole bleak story out of her, everything from her initial awakening in Castle Oblivion and discovery by the Organization all the way up to her rescue of Kairi from the Castle That Never Was.

In hindsight, Naminé supposed she ought to have predicted such enthusiastic kindness—the bright-hearted Kairi was rather like Sora in that respect—but it had been a pleasant surprise all the same. Kairi always insisted it wasn’t even magnanimous of her to react this way, and that anyone to whom Naminé might have explained herself would find her tale just as sympathetic, but Naminé wasn’t at all sure of that. She had never made a friend before, after all. At least, not the normal way, by talking and getting to know them without any unpleasant circumstances attached.

“It really does look good,” Kairi declared, inspecting Naminé’s nails. “Now you just need some outfits to go with it. I have some clothes you can try on, and you should be able to fit into all of them...I mean, you’re obviously my size, so…” She thought through the options. “Hey, what about my pink dress, with the zippers? Do you like that one? You can try it on once it’s clean.”

“I don’t know what I like,” Naminé admitted, studying her colored nails. Though her smile was as soft and sad as always, she still looked gently pleased by the effect. “I mean, I’ve never really...thought about things like that. I never had a chance to…”

“Well, that’s why we’ve got to get you caught up.”

Kairi stood up, picking up the empty plate and bowl that had contained their snacks and stacking them with sudden resolution.

“You know what? I’m gonna go get you some hot food. Do you think you need to come with me?” She regarded Naminé curiously. “I mean, will you fade out early if I go all the way downstairs and you stay here?”

“I don’t know,” Naminé admitted, still studying her nails. “Maybe…I’m not sure how far away from you I can be, like this.”

“Let’s test it out,” Kairi decided. “I bet you can handle it. You haven’t been out that long yet, and you aren’t blurry or anything. What do you think?”

Naminé let her hands fall into her lap, thinking, and finally nodded. Kairi threw on a pair of pajama pants over the shorts she usually slept in, stopping in front of the closed door with the bowl and plate tucked haphazardly under one arm.

“Sorry ahead of time if you fade out,” Kairi told her. “If you do, we’ll just try it again tomorrow night. Okay?”

“You don’t have to do this every night. I know you’re really busy with your training…”

“Are you kidding? This is the perfect time. There’s no way Yen Sid is going to find out about you while we’re all the way out here. We should do this as much as we can while it’s safe.”

She gave Naminé a conspiratorial thumbs-up.

“I don’t know what’s left downstairs,” she added, “so I’ll just bring you whatever’s there. Okay?”

“Okay.” Naminé nodded, but still looked faintly worried, and before Kairi could get the door open, she asked, “Kairi, are you...really sure that this is all right?”

“What is, Naminé?”

“All of this. You helping me like this...with your powers…”

“Of course I’m sure.” Kairi nodded. “I mean, it’s my heart you’re a part of, right? Just because my heart’s ‘special’ doesn’t mean that  _ I _ shouldn’t get to decide what to do with it. And besides...friends don’t let friends just disappear. Right?”

Kairi flashed her one last grin before bounding away, taking care to shut the door firmly behind her in case anyone passed through the hall. Naminé was left alone in the bedroom, sitting on the side of the bed, fiddling with the edge of the silk scarf she had tied around her neck earlier. 

After a bit, she stood up and moved to better see herself in the full-length mirror, and she clutched at the scarf before taking it off and knotting it again into a different shape, draping that around her shoulders and examining how it looked. 

She had an oddly conflicted expression as she did this, at once interested and yet cautious, as if she felt guilty for doing something forbidden. Still, the sight of her own pastel nails seemed to encourage her, and after a minute, she took the scarf off and hesitantly ran a hand over the rest of Kairi’s clothes scattered across the bed. Sometimes Naminé picked a piece up and held it against herself in the mirror, trying to guess how it might look if worn by her, not yet confident enough to actually put it on. But her smile, however faint, was genuine.


End file.
